


The Midnight Council

by cimorene



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Coming of Age, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Werewolves vs Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimorene/pseuds/cimorene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard, the child of a forbidden love between vampire and werewolf, ascends the throne of werewolf clan Wajdra at the tender age of eleven. The political situation between the dwindling numbers of the werewolves and their ancient enemies, the vampires, is precarious at best, and when his vampire mother and brother retreat to Transylvania, the only one Gerard can truly trust is Frank, the little werewolf cub who swore himself Gerard's liegeman the very day that they met.  Gerard and Frank are raised side-by-side in the castle in a political tinderbox, but as Gerard's coming-of-age approaches, a war between vampires and werewolves looms ever nearer, while humans encroaching on their territory threaten both with extinction. </p><p>Abandoned WIP (see Notes).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Midnight Council

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bexless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bexless/gifts), [waxjism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waxjism/gifts).



> This is almost exactly 1/3 of a novel: in fact it basically ends right at the beginning of what should have been Act III of five. 
> 
> I wrote it in 2007-2008, and it's taken me this long to admit I'm never going to be able to finish it because the plot requires research about medieval politics and warfare that would probably take years, as well as a level of skill in writing action and political intrigue that is utterly beyond me. It's a painful admission because I don't think I've ever loved a plot and premise that I worked on more.
> 
> Although the entire plot was planned, therefore, it ends on a cliffhanger and also in an intense state of UST. Read at your own risk. 
> 
> There's also a Magical Gypsies problem which, while inherited from Bram Stoker via lots of other fantasy literature, is inescapably problematic. When I was writing this story I was inspired by magical nomadic stock characters in a variety of fantasy absorbed over the years. I realized long after the story was abandoned that this is totally racist. Since the magical transport plays a key role in the story right now and the recognizability of the trope, thanks to Vampire Fantasy as a genre, is such that I didn't think there was really any way to fix it, I think total excision of the concept of magical nomadism would be the only solution. I did actually make some cuts to this draft, but taking it out entirely would have left gaping holes, so for the remaining recognizability of that racist trope in the Travellers I apologize. If the story had been finished I would have rewritten to remove them completely.
> 
> Finally, Bex and Wax nursed this story tirelessly and gave the rough draft, at the time, tons of cheerleading and guidance for which I am utterly in their debt. Love you, BBs.

_Prologue  
Vienna, Austria, 16th century_

It was a dark and stormy night, and rain pelted the carriages of noble guests as they pulled up before the canopied entrance of the great house where the grand ball was in progress. Dietrich-Wolfgang scented earthy rain, pungent soil and refuse in the streets, and the metallic crackle of lightning bolts in the air as he followed his party under the canopy, and not even his dancing shoes were soiled. Werewolves are fond of dark and stormy nights, and Die was no exception, but he had learned that it was more economical (and a great deal less inconvenient) to remove his fancy human dress before giving in to the urge to turn wolf and chase down the storm. There would be time for that after the ball.

Werewolves are not known as practicers of delayed gratification, but he was a younger son and had been groomed as a scholar. Life in metropolitan Vienna had already taught him many things.

He remembered thinking, as he stepped into the ballroom, that it would be a night to remember.

The rumble of lightning and the damp florid gusts of rain crept into the crowded, sweaty ballroom through great windows and stirred a miasma of scent - wine and tobacco, night soil and flowers, human arousal and hair oil; and over it all, the woody scent of other werewolves and the dry, sour traces of vampires.

The scent would raise any werewolf's hair on end. Dietrich-Wolfgang had been taught from a cub that blood-suckers were his mortal enemies. But Transylvania was ruled by them, and in a city like Vienna - capital of an empire - where sausage merchants and whores could rub elbows with chair-bearers and princes in the streets, vampires and werewolves must also coexist: ordered their coats at the same tailors, bowed at the same courts and played cards at the same parties. In the press of bodies, the smells were so tangled that he couldn't tell, casting his eye over the party, which few were not quite human. Ballrooms, in any event, were a place of truce.

It was while he danced with a wealthy widow of dubious breeding and no extraordinary beauty, but excellent figure and carnal appetite, that his eyes lit on the girl. She was a dark beauty, with luminous blushing skin and heavy brown hair, simply and richly gowned in the Italian fashion. Her eyes were huge, golden and almond-shaped, set deep under thick deeply arched black brows. Her chin was proud; her mouth was soft and red and serious. She looked no more than seventeen, and did not dance, but clung to the arm of the handsome Genoese nobleman who must be her father.

She passed from his sight, but his eyes were often on her that night. She was the most beautiful woman Dietrich-Wolfgang had ever seen, yet if she were so young as he suspected, he thought it wise to approach carefully. She never left the side of her guardian, and she never danced.

Once, as he took wine from a passing tray, Die heard a swirl of Italian from her corner of the room, and her guardian spoke of a house on the river. His heart beat faster at the thought of seeing her again. That was nothing to what it did when he looked up in the steps of the dance and caught her eyes. Candlelight reflected in glass and crystal, polished silver and gold, satin and jewels all over the room, but through the press of tens of bodies he caught the gleam of her slanted doe-like eyes, the slow flush of her cheek as she finally dropped her gaze. Her mouth curved in a smile. He must, he thought incoherently - he must be introduced.

He left the ball in high spirits via the cardroom and several glasses of brandy in company with a few young gentlemen of his acquaintance, all human and all disgustingly drunk. Werewolves being only slightly susceptible to drink, Die was relaxed and a little light-headed - reckless enough to walk through the rain, staining forever his dancing shoes, but sober enough to walk a straight line. He parted company amicably with his friends under a streetlamp and stood for a moment, scenting the air, feeling the tug of the storm, tasting the current that swept over the river, carrying tales from the sea. Water dripped from the brim of his hat and wetted his satin-lined cloak, and a gust of wind blew up around him, chilling his legs and tugging his cloak and wrapping him in a cacophany of river-smell: dead fish and live fish, rotting garbage, wet mouldy hemp ropes, wood and turpentine, the sandy mud in the streets, the faint crisp thread of woodsmoke -

\- and he walked around the corner and into a wall of vampires.

The five men ranging across the street were lean and richly dressed; he recognised two faces, and thought they all had come from the ball; they were less sober than he. A pale, fragile-seeming youth with untidy silver-blond hair and dead grey eyes stepped forward at their centre; he was perhaps as tall as Dietrich's chest, and his skin was clammy and white, the glamour of candlelight fled. Thunder roared and rain lashed the street and the roofs of houses like the sound of horses' hooves. Slowly, the dark beetle-browed vampire to the right of the white one stepped forward at his hand. The one on the far left flexed his hands. The one on the far right bared his teeth; they moved, and in the flash of lightning vanished and reformed until he could feel and smell them all around him, their strange dead smell and the trail of their magic. The circle tightened.

This was not a way for a prince of the noble clan of Wajdra to die. Dietrich-Wolfgang tensed and gathered himself, senses tingling, and strained to hold his form, when every nerve screamed that he should turn wolf, turn wolf and leap and rend. He wasn't going to do that yet; he didn't want to spoil his clothes.

"How are you gentlemen this evening?" he said instead.

The vampire behind him sprang at him first, and Dietrich-Wolfgang ducked and twisted, threw off his grip and growled a warning; the other four trembled warily in indecision while he pulled himself to his knees in the muddy street, and then the white one sprang at him and his long white hands were around his throat; all the blood in his veins pulsed, and his flesh crawled, his teeth hurt as he started to change instinctively, thrusting it away from him with his mind, twisting his hands around the vampire's wrists. From the corner of his eye he saw one cloud into mist and condense in the form of a wolf, still reeking of vampire, and it sprang for his leg and gouged deeply into his thigh. He roared or screamed.

"Won't you play with us, pretty dog?" one of them said, and he felt such a rage twisting through him, it was like moonlight on his face. His limbs supple with new strength, he broke free and dived after his attacker - but he felt another one leap on his back.

Had the five vampires wanted to kill him, he might well have died that night. But when the lightning blazed overhead and illuminated the cloaked figure at the mouth of the street, all they lost was a piece of sport.

It was the cherry-coloured evening cloak of a lady, the hood pulled high and shadowing the face, the hem sweeping almost on the ground, and the voice was loud and clear as a bell, saying only "Leave here - _at once_ ," in perfect French. The shapes vanished from his back like smoke and Dietrich-Wolfgang climbed to his feet; his breeches were undoubtedly ruined, but he felt sure the expensive lace on his blouse was still fine.

"Milady," said the white vampire, with a bow, and melted into the night; another followed him, and when the lady flung back her hood and showed her pale white face, the last of them averted his gaze and backed away, cowering like a dog, before he, too, took to his heels. Dietrich-Wolfgang heard his footsteps, and then heard them no more; he didn't watch. He didn't look away from the lady.

It was she.

Her eyes were wide, but they tilted catlike at the corners, fringed in dusky thick lashes. In the darkness he could see her pallor, he could smell it from her - the dead, dry smell of vampire and the lush underpinnings of the fresh blood she must have drunk, for the glowing, youthful beauty he saw before him.

It smelled wonderful.

That still dignity he had mistaken for shyness in the ballroom. Now, this close, he saw - she let him see - that her eyes were laughing, and when he swept her a bow precisely two fractions deeper than the white vampire's, she laughed a little, a rich, throaty sound.

In Vienna, at the University and in the ballrooms, he was known as a Lord Dietrich-Wolfgang Karloff; he let it be assumed that his father was a baron. "Allow me to present myself," he begged, and the lady inclined her head. He said, "I am Prince Dietrich-Wolfgang Karloff Lupul von Wajdra."

She put out her hand to him; when he bent to kiss it, the flesh was cool. "The clan of Wajdra, indeed? And the princeling so far abroad?"

"You are thinking of my brother Silvestru, milady," he said, with a bow of apology.

"Ah; then you are not the heir?"

"No. My life is my own," he told her. He still had her small, cool hand in his; it was white and delicate, the fingers smooth and rounded, and she made no effort to extract it. For the first time, he felt that what he said was true. He was not the representative or the spy of the Wajdra, not a warlord, not a royal prince; he was a young werewolf far from his birthplace - a strong, wealthy young nobleman in one of the greatest cities of Europe, bowing before a beautiful lady. The future was _his._

"Good," she said, sweetly. "Prince Dietrich-Wolfgang, I am Lisaveta, Countess Zombescu."

"Romanian?" he said in surprise.

"For the last eighty years, or thereabout," she said carelessly.

"You fascinate me," said Die.

"Do I?" purred the Countess.

"Milady, may I offer you my escort?"

"Thank you, sir. May I offer you the hospitality of my lodging?"

He would have followed her anywhere.

***

_Paris, France, 11 years later_

Michel wasn't old enough to have to have real lessons yet, but a year ago Mama and Papa had started sending Nurse away when Gerard's French master and German master, drawing master and tutor came. As far as the French master was concerned, though perhaps he had not told Mama so, he simply had two pupils; Michel was quieter than Gerard, but smarter, and he liked little Monsieur Lefevre.

For all the other lessons, though, he was a pale, silent shadow. He would not draw, or learn sums or history; but neither would he leave Gerard alone. Instead he would play quietly with his toys in the corner of the room, or sit leaning over Gerard's shoulder or napping on the couch by the fire. His favourite days were the drawing master's days, because his favourite thing was to watch Gerard draw. That was Gerard's favourite, too. He preferred drawing with Michel's company to drawing alone. Michel was quiet and never asked stupid questions like who was in the picture or why they were fighting, or where the castle was and how he knew that it looked like that.

To the schoolmasters, Gerard and Michel were only the sons of Mr Waj, _M'sieur Way_ as the Frenchmen called him. They thought that Papa was a merchant from Poland; they had never heard Papa's stories of the Transylvanian werewolf hunt, or seen Mama's dream visions of Castle Zombescu and Castle Wajdra. They did not even know that the language Gerard and Michel spoke softly together was Romanian.

Though it was quite normal for Michel to sit quietly around other people, there was something in his look during Gerard's German lesson. He seemed tense and fidgety, and now that they were alone together he remained just as silent as before. It wasn't the skin-greying hunger that made him look thin and frail if he hadn't drunk enough blood; it wasn't the brooding sadness that came when Gerard had hurt his feelings.

Gerard finished scratching the rough picture down on paper - two small boys hand-in-hand in the front hallway of their house, drawn so small that Gerard was barely taller than Michel, with the furniture tremendous and towering over them. He nudged it across the table to Michel, who bit his lip and pulled it closer to study.

He was only seven, Gerard reminded himself. Michel could seem just as old as Gerard sometimes, and it was easy to forget how much smaller he was, because he was so serious. But he was still only seven.

"Is something the matter?" he asked.

Michel just shook his head slowly, but when he looked up at Gerard suddenly, he looked so anxious that Gerard ran around the table to hug him. "No. I don't know," he mumbled into Gerard's frock. "I'm all right, but I'm worried. Someone is coming."

"Someone?" said Gerard. "Who? Did Mama say something last night while I was..."

But Michel shook his head in frustration, " _No._ I don't know."

"Let's stop drawing for now," said Gerard. "Do you want to sit on the couch?"

Michel held Gerard's hand tightly. "Will you sing me a story?"

Gerard pretended to think about it: "Do I have to _sing_ it?"

"Yes."

Gerard sang for him, of course. He didn't know it then, but Michel's precognition was accurate. They fell asleep side by side on the couch. When Nurse came back, she built up the fire and covered them with a woven rug, and that was how Mama found them once the front door had slammed behind Papa and the stranger from Michel's vision, and she ran up the stairs to them.

Gerard woke up to Mama crouching in front of him, stroking his hair back from his forehead absently and staring into the fire, deep lines of worry in her face. Her hair was looking less shiny than usual, and her neck and cheeks had lost their round softness; she had not drunk her blood for supper.

"Mama? What time is it?" said Gerard.

"Oh, it's late, little one," said Mama, and turned her worried face to look at him. "I'm sorry; did I wake you?"

"It's okay. Michel was worried," he explained.

"Your brother is more sensitive than I, and he but a child. God knows we have cause to worry!" said Mama.

She sounded angry, though not at him, and sad. Mama was almost never angry. "Mama?" said Gerard timidly, and felt the rug stir and fall as Michel sat up and rubbed his eyes. "What is it? What has happened?"

"It's your Papa," she told him heavily, putting her cold hands around his, shifting onto her knees on the floor, all uncaring of her gown. "His father and his brother are dead. He has gone back to Romania to be King of the Wajdra."

Gerard and Michel had never met their grandfather the King, or their uncle Silvestru, but Mama was afraid, and Gerard was afraid too.

Michel shrank closer to Gerard and pulled the rug up again. "Papa is gone," he said. It wasn't even a question.

"He left with the messenger. We are going too, boys, don't worry, once we have packed our things to have them sent to us. We are going to live in Castle Wajdra." She shivered. "To live with your father's clan."

Then she climbed onto the couch with them, under the rug, and put her arms around both of them at once. Gerard buried his face in her gown, and smelled the perfume-and-vampire scent of her and the fear, fear, fear on top of it all.

"Everything will be all right, boys," she told them, even though Gerard and Michel hadn't said anything. "Mama will take care of you."

When Gerard looked up at her, she looked even older than before. Her face was thin and grim. Under the rug, Gerard felt Michel's small hand creep into his, and laced their fingers together. He squeezed it, and promised himself that he would take care of Michel, too.

***

_Castle Wajdra, seat of Clan Wajdra  
Eastern Romania_

For the first two weeks they were in Castle Wajdra, Mama didn't let Gerard and Michel out of the royal suite. The royal suite was almost as big as their house in Paris, but it was all stone and decorated with fur and old tapestries and big wooden furniture, like a church, like a ducal palace. There was no Nurse here, just Mama. Gerard and Michel knew all about vampires and werewolves, how they were supposed to hate each other, how Mama and Papa had met in Vienna and gone away after their royal wedding and never moved back.

It had been romantic when it was a bedtime story. Now it was real and scary - it was a strange, cold castle, and being surrounded by more adult werewolves than all the humans he had ever known. Gerard was a werewolf, he knew that; he could turn into a wolf if he wanted to. And now that Papa was the King, that meant Gerard was the heir to the throne. But Michel was a vampire and Mama was a vampire, and Gerard could smell the fear and resentment, sometimes, from the strange werewolves around Mama.

Even though the royal suite was _big_ , there wasn't much to do after they had seen all of it so much, and so even though it might not be safe for Michel and Mama, Gerard was relieved when she finally let them out, and they went with Papa to the audience chamber. The middle of the room was entirely empty, and there were only two doors; Papa's most important werewolves stood beside them and Mama sat in the second throne next to him. Michel and Gerard were just walking around, touching and knocking on the walls, blowing dust off the tapestries, when the big door opened and what seemed like a whole family of werewolves came in - two big men with beards, a tiny woman in a fur-trimmed red gown, and three children.

While their parents were talking to Papa, something about loyal friends and border provinces, the three children, with looks of curiosity, pretended to wander around the room and look at the furniture so that they could look at Michel and Gerard.

Gerard stared back at them. Michel stood silently at Gerard's side while the smallest of the werewolf children, even smaller than Michel, took two steps closer than his siblings and said directly to them, "Are you the princes? Gerard and Michel?" He pronounced their names in the Romanian way, Gerhard and Mihael.

His siblings weren't pleased with his forwardness - one reached out and grabbed him by the back of his shirt and the other apologised for her brother's behaviour.

"That's all right," said Gerard, "no, let him go," and with a surprised look and only a little hesitation, the older boy did. The little one looked up and grinned. His teeth were white and human-looking, like Gerard's. The smile took up half of his face.

"I'm Gerard, and this is Michel," and he pronounced their names clearly, and only a little slow, not to _too_ obviously correct the little one's pronunciation, just to help him. "Who are you?"

"Frank -" the little one started to say, but the boy shoved his shoulder, pushing him to his knees, and bowed over his head, while the girl curtsied.

"I am Linica Iagar," said the girl.

"And I am Onu," said the older boy, "and this little one is our cousin Frank, your highness. Please forgive him; he is only six." He was still pinning Frank to the floor with a hand on his shoulder. Frank's pointed little face was pale and uncertain, but he still looked up at Gerard eagerly.

"No, please, not at all - you need not push him down; let him stand. He is young," he said, trying not to offend the cousin, who finally let go of Frank's shoulder.

Frank seemed submissive but unsubdued and unconcerned by the rough treatment, perhaps used to it, and only climbed to his feet again with a scuffle of his little boots. But when he heard Gerard say that he was young, his face clouded a little. Linica laughed and touched his shoulder affectionately, but Gerard winced inside. It was something he hated to have said of him as well.

"It was kind of you to introduce yourself to us," Gerard continued, and took a step forward to hold out his hand to Frank. "We have never been to Romania before, and have been held all week in our rooms. And we have never been in a castle before as well; everything is so new and strange and big, and dark. You have so much stone here, everywhere."

Frank took his hand, but frowned in confusion, "If you have not lived in a castle before, then where did you come from?"

 _"France,"_ said Michel sharply, but Frank only glanced at him.

"I know that you came from France. I meant, where did you live?"

"Just in an ordinary house," said Gerard, bemused.

"A _cottage_?" said Linica, scandalised.

"No, not a cottage," said Gerard, although certainly they had lived some in a cottage in the summertime. "A town house." It was then he realised that he had seen no cities. How would they have townhouses when you could not go to Town? "A house of stone and wood, with three floors, and room for servants, but not as big as a castle," he explained.

The other children were clearly puzzled by the explanation but willing to let the matter drop.

"Do you live in a castle too, then?" said Michel.

"Castle Iagar," said Onu. "It is far from here, near Transylvania. We set out from home as soon as my grandfather had word of your father's return."

"But it is an old fortress," said Frank, "and built for battle. It is not half as grand as Castle Wajdra. My aunt says that our family are old warriors but of no political importance."

 _"Frank!"_ hissed Linica.

"That is - not true!" Onu stammered.

Michel was amused, Gerard could see, although his face was still composed. He folded his arms over his chest as he did when he wanted to laugh, and would not.

Gerard felt rather like laughing too. "I should like to see it some day," was all he could think of to say; but then he noticed his stomach rumbling, and had a happy thought, after all. "Would you like to join us for lunch? Since our parents seem busy?"

He saw Mama looking anxiously after him as he spoke to Enric, the werewolf next to the door behind Papa's throne. A tall, thin, and muscular man with a great shaggy mane of black hair streaked with grey, he had been often in their quarters with them and was trusted for the time with Gerard's and Michel's safety. Gerard caught her eye and moved his head a little, and Enric spoke with Papa's other werewolves quietly, and then came back to escort the five of them back to Gerard and Michel's rooms.

There was a room with a great huge fireplace and the floor in front of it covered in fur rugs, with more furs and weavings hanging upon the walls with ancient burnished metal shields. There were old sofas, their satin cushions worn dull and pale with age, and a small dining table made specifically for children's use.

They were served hare cooked soft, rare veal and whole roasted birds. Their guests' eyes were round at this food, and Frank seemed uncertain how to cut it up; Gerard and Michel were used to the variety of meat after a few weeks. Gerard wondered what werewolves outside the castle ate.

Michel picked over his food, eating bits of the things whose flavours piqued his interest; he did not have to eat regular food at all, of course, but he had never liked to be left out of what Gerard was doing; and he even made Mama help him take the form of a wolf when Papa had taught Gerard to use his wolf form. It wasn't very comfortable, though; and even though they could still play together, the whole world was so large and overwhelming like that, and in his wolf form Gerard had found himself even more aware of the strangeness of Michel's and Mama's smells. He did not use it very often any longer; he preferred to stay like Michel so that they could play together.

After the meal Michel usually drank blood; it was awkward that he and Mama could not hunt here, and the werewolves could not serve him living animals or fresh blood at the dinnertable, the way they had eaten in France. Gerard looked enquiringly at him, but Michel seemed unconcerned, and not particularly pale and drawn, so perhaps he need not drink yet. He was caught up in these thoughts so much that he did not at first notice the other three children rising politely from their chairs, and standing in front of them without moving. They were looking at him and Michel, and Gerard realised they were waiting, so he got up and led the way away from the table.

Then a strange thing happened - first Onu, then Linica flung themselves to the floor; and a couple of wolf pups crawled out of their clothes and shook themselves, then drew themselves to the fur rugs in front of the fire and flung themselves down on their bellies there. Gerard had seen the wolves in Mama's dream visions of the wedding, and he had met the adult werewolves who sometimes came to their house, but never before had he seen another werewolf child.

Onu and Linica did not look like Gerard, who, like Papa, was almost entirely black, with a silver blaze. They were small and wiry-furred, and looked like puppies, just like he would if he changed; but their fur seemed shorter and closer than his, and both were mottled brown and gold and black all over. Their blue eyes gleamed up at him sleepily and inquiringly from their places, and Linica raised her head to give a sharp bark to Frank, who was standing looking inquiringly at Gerard and Michel.

"Won't you change?" said Frank.

Michel tensed next to Gerard, and Gerard, looking at him in surprise, saw that he wasn't just hurt - he had always wanted to be a werewolf like Gerard - but angry. He didn't say anything, just sat himself firmly on the sofa.

"I don't do that very much," said Gerard. "I could, but then we wouldn't be able to talk."

"Everyone usually sleeps after meals," Frank said wonderingly, "even grown-ups sometimes. Is _everything_ different in France?" Gerard saw him glance covertly at the sofa, but instead he seated himself on one of the fur rugs on the floor. "Is it okay if I talk to you too?"

Michel sniffed, but Gerard couldn't help smiling. "Almost everything is different," he agreed. "And please, I'd like it if you talked to us. We've never met other children very much, or had any friends except each other, so I would be very grateful for your friendship - Frank."

Frank surprised him again, when he said that - shifted on the floor, up onto his knees before Gerard, his whole body taut with excitement, his face glowing up at Gerard, and it was like he was looking right through Gerard's face into the inside of his head. Gerard's head tingled with wolf thoughts in a way it never had when he was shaped like a boy before. "Really?" said Frank.

He was so happy that Gerard couldn't help smiling back at him. He felt like laughing almost. "Of course, really," he said.

Frank put out his hand. It took a moment for Gerard to realise what he wanted, but then he put his hand in Frank's small one and Frank leaned over and - Gerard could hear Onu bark sharply - kissed it. "I swear," he said, and squeezed Gerard's hand and bent his head down over it. Gerard's wolf-senses were tingling again. He had a feeling that something had just happened.

"What did you just swear?" Gerard frowned.

Frank looked surprised and spoke a word in Romanian that Gerard didn't know.

"What?"

"Friendship," said Frank, "don't you accept?"

Gerard blinked at him. How could he reject a sworn offer of friendship when it was given? "Of course I accept."

"Do you have any idea what you actually just accepted to do?" said Michel to him in French. "Because I don't."

"Not to _do_ anything, just _friendship_ ," said Gerard.

Michel stood up abruptly. "These are _werewolves_ , Gerard! We're not in Paris anymore." He stormed through the door to their sleeping chamber and closed it behind him.

"I'm a werewolf too!" Gerard called after him, but it was too late. When he looked around, Onu and Linica were sitting up alertly, their ears cocked forward, their eyes fixed coldly on Frank, who shrank back away from them.

Before he realised what was happening, Gerard was on his feet too, locking eyes with both of them in turn until they dropped their heads down on their paws in submission.

Gerard had only seen that happen to his father before. Frank moved closer to Gerard's side, and that was how Baron Iagar found them an hour later: a silent room filled with Gerard and three wolf cubs - Frank curled up next to Gerard on the couch, Onu and Linica drowsing before the fire and Gerard staring into its flames, his mind in a whirl. The Baron looked around the room and raised his eyebrows, and then slowly began to smile.

He said the word that Gerard didn't know again to Enric, standing by the door.

Enric bowed and said, "Sworn and accepted, my lord."

"Already?" Now the Baron looked surprised. He came over to ruffle the brown fur on the top of Frank's wolf head with one of his large hairy hands. "You always were a brave and independent little runt," he laughed, and scratched under his chin. "Are you really determined to stay?"

Frank stood up with all four paws planted firmly on the sofa cushions and barked once, fiercely. Then Papa and Mama and the other two werewolves from the Iagar family swept through the door and everything got confusing for a while; Onu and Linica went away, and the Baron and his brother, leaving only Frank and his aunt alone with them and finally someone explained what was going on to Gerard.

Gerard looked around anxiously while Papa offered the Baroness a chair. Meanwhile, Frank burrowed back into the folds of his too-large tunic and shifted back into a boy. When he sat up his hair was disordered and his arms in the wrong holes, but there were laces at the sides and neck for loosening and tightening it, and he fixed it himself.

"Now he has sworn his loyalty to you for all his life," Papa explained apologetically, "he will have to stay and be schooled with the castle pups."

"And leave his family right away?" Gerard looked down at Frank on the floor in horror. "I didn't mean for you to do that!"

Frank looked confused, his big eyes going from Gerard to Papa to the Baroness.

"The Prince has lived all his life in France," said the Baroness. "Frank, my dear little one, he did not know what he said."

"But you swore," said Frank, turning finally to look at Gerard. "And you meant it."

Of course Gerard had meant it, he thought, he had meant that he would be his _friend_. "I did mean it, but I don't want you to have to go away from your family," he said. "You're still so -"

"I am _not_ young," said Frank. "I have already sworn!"

"You are not so very young as that, but perhaps a little young to be moved to Castle Wajdra to foster, Frank. Perhaps if we were just to wait," she said to Papa, "to excuse the Prince, who did not know our ways - of course Frank will have to come when he reaches the age -"

Gerard surprised everyone in the room then (including himself) by standing up and saying _"No!"_

The look of panic in Frank's eyes was making his chest ache with his own desperate homesickness all over again, and he dropped to his knees on the floor in front of Frank and reached out for his hand. "I meant it," said Gerard. "Don't make him go, not if he doesn't want to."

***

_One year later_

The day of the King's state funeral was the day Queen Lisaveta and Prince Michel left the land of the Wajdra - with no intention to return. The Queen packed her trunks and ordered them shipped overland to the borders of her Transylvanian estates; after the funeral she and Prince Michel took Gerard aside in their quarters, so bent on privacy he sent Frank not just outside the room, but outside the royal quarters to pace the hallway in anxiety between the stoic faces of Elric and Petre, Gerard's guards - now the King, now _his Majesty_ , but the first time Frank had called him that Gerard had nearly broken down in tears, and made him swear never to call him that again.

When the Queen and the Prince, dressed for travel now completely in black after the vampiric Transylvanian fashion, walked by Frank at his station on their way outside, Michel locked eyes with Frank again, with that look of cold jealousy and threat. Frank could never be certain if Michel hated him more for making friends with Gerard or for being born a werewolf (Gerard confided once to Frank that it was his secret wish); in that moment he saw a little seed of relief under the anger, and Frank felt a little flash of anger under his relief.

It was fortunate indeed that he was here, fortunate he had made up his mind and declared his fealty so early, fortunate the young Prince - that is, the young King - had someone he could rely on, someone just _his_ , when his mother and brother abandoned him. The door to the royal suite opened, but no one came out; then Frank heard a sniff from within and flung himself through the gap and into Gerard's arms.

He was seven now, but no bigger than when he was six, and couldn't reach to hug Gerard really unless Gerard bent over, but Gerard didn't seem interested in crying on his shoulder right now. "Wait, no," he said thickly, "I want to watch them go." Frank went with him to the window of the nursery room where he had first sworn himself to the service of his King, and through the deep, narrow window they watched the huge black shapes swooping from the parapet, the fluttering wings of their black cloaks straining and shrinking to the wings of two black crows as they circled and cried, and flew away into the lowering dark clouds in the sky.

Gerard stood at the window a long time after they were gone, until the clouds turned black and rain started lashing down onto the mountain. Frank stood silently beside him, crossing his arms against the cold draft.

When he had cried with homesickness at first, Gerard had pulled him up onto the sofa with him and put his arms around him, and Frank had changed into a wolf and slept in his lap. He'd seen Michel put his arm around Gerard, a few times, Gerard resting his head on top of Michel's and their black hair mixing together. But he seemed so drawn into himself, Frank didn't know what comfort he could offer. He stood closer, so their arms touched, but he wasn't even certain that Gerard knew he was there.

"I couldn't have gone with them," Gerard mumbled, just when Frank was starting to think he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. He blinked and looked down at his hands on the stone windowsill, and then down at Frank standing beside him. "She offered to take me to Transylvania, at least for a little while. I said no."

Frank didn't say anything, even though this was something Gerard hadn't told him before.

"They would have stayed longer, too," he continued. "If I'd asked. But they don't think they belong here. And the wolves don't think they belong here, either." He looked down seriously _at_ Frank then, not through him. "Maybe they're right." He sounded so sad, and so certain of himself and the choices he had made.

For the first time Frank realised that it didn't matter what he did, how fully he did his duty, how much he loved his King or how good a friend he was. Even if Gerard could depend on him completely, even if Frank could keep him occupied and watch him all day, he would still be sad. He could never take the Queen's place and he could never take Prince Michel's. Frank wasn't often jealous of Michel, because Gerard was so much nicer to Frank than he had to be, and Michel was his _brother_ , he knew, and he had known him first.

He thought he might be feeling jealous now. It hurt horribly in his chest, like a hollow hunger, entirely different from when he hurt for himself. He touched Gerard's arm and looked up at him anxiously. He knew, suddenly, that he couldn't cry - even if Gerard did, he still couldn't. He hoped Gerard would cry. Then they could both feel better.

Gerard didn't cry, though. "I'm so tired, Frankie," he whispered.

"I'll order dinner," Frank said. "You should sit down on the sofa."

***

The pack of cubs being schooled inside Castle Wajdra were an elite group composed of the children of warriors, ministers, old and revered families, and the closest cousins of the King. The Italian and French they were learning besides the German and Hungarian Frank had been taught at Iagar, the books they read, the lives of men who lived a thousand years ago in Greece and Rome - everything was different from home, even the rich clothes he was given to wear during lessons; Frank was a member of the King's household, now, and wore fine black and red. He was even taught dancing, drawing, and music, here.

What was the same in any pack of cubs were the hunts, the mock-battles, and the informal pecking order that grew up. Frank was the newest, when he moved to Castle Wajdra, for the princes were not schooled with the other children yet; he was the smallest, he was a poor provincial from deep in the Carpathians, and he knew almost as little about court life as the princes did. He had been the runt of the pack all his time there, saved from bullying and ostracism only because he was good at being friendly and didn't care much for other children's opinions anyway, in the excitement of moving into the castle and his new life, and all the time he was allowed to spend with Gerard, almost from the beginning.

Frank knew, of course he knew, all werewolves knew, about _fidelitate_. Every lord accepted the oath and the ritual from his closest personal followers, and Frank had seen how Teodor and Mihas were always with his uncle, and Andre, Bodis, and Janos with his grandfather. He had not understood what would happen to him when he swore it, for all that - how unquestioningly he was given his time to attend to the prince almost every day, between lessons, and how Gerard's summons could rescue him from any other obligations or claims. He could even _lie_ about it; but he only did that once, even though when he slipped into the royal suite and confessed immediately to Gerard, who looked up from reading a book, he only laughed.

It was months after the funeral before the King was often in the pack, but Frank knew how difficult it was for him; there were two whole weeks when he did not go to lessons himself, only lurked in the royal suite like a shadow, reading Gerard's books and looking at his paintings and listening to him cry through the closed door of his bedroom, wiping the tears off his face when he heard Gerard's hand on the door.

Gerard was the _King_ , and every wolf cub there knew it; but the fact that they would submit if he stared into their eyes didn't make them kind, and if anything he was more ostracised than Frank. Frank wasn't a foreigner with a French name; Frank wasn't feared, and Frank knew how to be a wolf.

Gerard was a sleek, noble wolf with the black colouring of the royal line and the thick, lustrous fur ruff of his German grandmother; but he was a little awkward in his body, confused at reading scent trails, clumsy on his paws. He didn't _choose_ to change, and almost never did where the others could see him; he didn't turn wolf when they were released in the woods or the courtyard, didn't frolic in the grass and roll in the dirt and wrestle like the others did, but for months perched under a tree or on a rock with his sketchpad and drew.

The other cubs turned their backs on him, or worse, they stared, and the day the chief huntsman's son Culai called Frank "runt" was the final straw. Frank said nothing, and Gerard watched expressionlessly as he asked whether blood-sucking were a requirement for association with the royal family and called Gerard a sickly, weak and crazy half-breed.

Gerard watched expressionlessly, but Frank didn't. He was between Gerard and all the other cubs with his fists clenched; then he changed and sprang forward, teeth bared and fur high, though Culai was older than Gerard, even, and scratched Frank's face under the left eye until it bled, flinging him to the ground and snapping at his neck, and then - then he smelled and heard Gerard through the haze of red, Culai yelped and Frank saw Gerard, still in human form, kicking him away uncaring. He dropped to his knees beside Frank and touched his face, stroked his side - "Okay?" he said.

Frank panted and nodded agreement and heaved himself to his feet.

"Let's go," said Gerard coolly, and walked away with a scathing look over the pack. Culai lay cowed, his friends shamed. None of them would ever be Gerard's friends, and Frank told him as much as he tucked a blanket over him on the sofa.

"I don't need friends like that," Gerard said dismissively, his voice so chilly that Frank shivered and the hairs on his neck stood up in involuntary fear. Gerard was human now, pale and black-haired, but his eyes were still hard and golden and blood-thirsty, still gleaming with wolf.

***

_Two years later_

The Midsummer banquet started not long after noon, all served outside on long white-clothed tables draped in flowers and laden with fish and game, creams and sauces, moist breads and succulent peaches and strawberries on beds of lettuce and orange segments.

"I am quite sure it would be in my rights as monarch to _order_ them to invite the cubs to the Midsummer bonfire," said Gerard over a glass of summer wine, light-hearted and playful.

Frank laughed at him, "Yes, if you want Yes, your Majesty, No, your Majesty all night."

Gerard bent closer and nudged Frank with his elbow. "You know where the blame lies for that." He was smiling, though that formality in truth made him rather uncomfortable. "Everyone is convinced you will challenge them to a duel if they don't treat me with the proper respect now."

"They should have let me fight him," Frank muttered, burying his face in his goblet, "I would have won."

"Righteous fury can give you fire, but it can't make you bigger than his foreleg," Gerard pointed out, with an apologetic air. "I'm sure we did the right thing. And just think how embarrassing it would be for all of them if a brawl were allowed in the audience chamber over their supposed lack of respect for my dignity?"

"Next time I'll invite him outside," said Frank, spearing a fish on his fork.

"Never mind that my dignity is their _job,_ " Gerard reminded him. It was an old argument and one they both enjoyed, now.

Frank was beginning to lose his interest in it, though, and an appetite for sweets was growing in its place. He chose a strawberry from the platter and popped it into his mouth. "I made no claim they don't respect the dignity of your position; it's your maturity and authority they disbelieve," he mumbled contentedly around his mouthful of sweet juice.

"I wonder," said Gerard with a deliberate puzzled expression, "whether that could be due to my _age_?"

"Want a strawberry?" said Frank, and Gerard opened his mouth, so Frank leaned closer and set it against his bottom teeth. "But if you want to see a bonfire..."

Gerard leaned forward in his eagerness, almost choking on the strawberry. "How?"

"All the villages have them," Frank shrugged. "I believe we can sneak out of the castle, and through the woods as wolves."

It was useful having Frank at his right hand: the tables were banquet-sized, buzzing with laughter and wine and the clatter of cutlery, and the grass was full of wolves and pups frolicking or lazing in the sun. Enric was close enough to watch Gerard, but not close enough to hear them, and hardly on his guard with the castle grounds ringed with armed and liveried guards and the people all too busy in their own drunken revels to try them.

"If you're done with your meal?" said Gerard.

"I still have to fill my strawberry stomach," Frank smirked. "I believe I've never seen so many strawberries in one place before." Gerard had thought to mention it to the cook, after seeing the way Frank had stuffed himself with them all last summer.

"My clansfolk were out in the fields at dawn for two days in all the countryside around here to fill your strawberry stomach," said Gerard.

He'd been with the castle cooks several times this week watching their preparations for the feast, and in the courtyard in the mornings when the horse carts laden with deliveries for the King's table arrived. He'd spoken to farmers who tended strawberry plots nearby, and a sun-browned young boys his own age who hunted wild berries in the woods. It seemed to be pleasant enough work for them.

He thought Frank would enjoy the sun-browned boy's job, if only for all the strawberries he could sneak into his mouth while he worked. Frank was unsuited for such work - fierce and tireless in battle, glowing with leashed energy that could light up the faces of all the people around him, he could too easily drain himself dry. His exhaustion was terrifying to witness, and he not infrequently made himself sick.

But he'd been healthy for months now, except for a few days he had stayed abed without any urging and a few Gerard had had to order him held there. He was growing up fast, and was in his tenth year already (birthed at Samhain, a time of power said to bring fortune), but still his head only reached Gerard's shoulder.

Gerard called for another pitcher of chilled apple cider to the head of the high table and relaxed back in his throne while Frank gorged himself until close to sundown. The noise on the lawn was dying, and liveried servants were clearing the tables and kindling torches inside the stone walls, lining the broad garden paths. The crowd was stirring lazily as the sunbathers shook themselves awake and took mugs of cider or retreated to the shadows in pairs.

"There will be leftover berries in plenty in the morning," said Gerard. Frank had ceased to eat them, and was only occasionally toying with the ones which lay on his plate between sips of drink.

"I want there to be berries every morning," Frank sighed. "But then I think I would grow tired of them, and I prefer them like this, a treat. It's dusk now, so perhaps if you only go and ask Enric about fencing or -"

"Fencing?" said Gerard disbelievingly. "I hate fencing -"

Frank grinned and a familiar dimple appeared to crease his cheek. "Ask what you please, then, but I swear he'll talk an hour if you mention foils, for you know it is his fondest wish -"

"That I should give up swords and take up rapiers?" said Gerard.

"I have never heard him preach so passionately else."

"Very well, I'll keep that in mind for another time, then," said Gerard. "But for tonight I think I don't have an hour to debate the contents of the castle armoury, so perhaps if I simply stand and withdraw gracefully from the table, and you follow?" He suited action to words and nodded at a footman, a guard, and the major domo in his red coat on his way in through the door.

"I cannot imagine why they will not believe you adult now," Frank muttered as he followed Gerard into the shade of the castle.

Gerard laughed at him. "Can you not? Well, then I'm sure that neither can I. I don't see what they find in my conduct to quarrel with if I choose to take the day away from lessons of government to draw, or absent myself from swordplay because I have slept till noon, or sneak away from the castle at midnight unattended -" Frank yelped in dismay "- except by my own dearest friend!"

"I'll protect you," said Frank.

Gerard laughed without thinking, before he realised Frank was deadly serious; and when he reached the royal suite, realised Frank had been silent all the way, and turned in surprise to see the mulish set of his mouth and the wounded frown-line on his brow.

The guard there pushed open the door for them, and Gerard waited until it was closed behind them to say carefully, "Of course you would protect me, with your own life if need be, I know." He knew all too well, for Frank was rather _too_ ready to interpose himself between Gerard and any imaginable threat, when Gerard would rather he stayed safe himself.

"You're talking as if I were still _seven_ ," said Frank, heaping the epithet with scorn.

It was difficult not to smile, but Gerard met his eyes and said firmly, "Of course I am talking to you exactly as I did when you were seven; did I ever treat you as less than my companion, even when you were _six_?"

"No," said Frank, but the frown did not ease. "But I know you, Gerard. You don't want _me_ to protect you; if I am not good enough for you though it is _I_ who swore oath to you, why don't you ask _Enric_ to take you to a country bonfire?"

"No! I mean, of course that is not what I meant. You are good enough! You know I would rather you protect me than anyone!" said Gerard. "I do not tell all my secrets to Enric! And I certainly wouldn't wish to bring him to a bonfire and hear nothing but how hot the flames are, and how many wolves he has seen burn to death in his lifetime and why he must keep his sword at ready, though you cannot fight a fire with a _sword_." Now the frown was easing; he even saw a hint of smile. "I know I can count on you to leap in to the fire to pull me out, at least, if not throw me in the river."

"You deserved it," said Frank, but the tension was gone from the lines of his little body, and he dropped his face and rubbed it with his hands. "I am sorry," he said, looking up at Gerard with his eyes shining and a little wet. "I was acting like a baby."

Gerard put his arms around him and squeezed until Frank grunted. "I shouldn't have laughed. I only meant to say that the councillors are more likely to consider you my compatriot than my watchdog."

Frank pulled away from him grinning again. "That is because I always take _your_ side, at least when we are in company."

"And that is why I had rather have _you_ with me!"

Frank giggled. "We had better leave everything here and stay four-footed the whole way. Here, let me help you," and reached to ease the formal coat off Gerard's shoulders before scrambling out of his own. Soon enough Gerard was surveying his rooms from under the window, looking with golden wolf eyes. Frank had unlatched the servants' door before he changed; now he blinked at Gerard, flicked his ears and tilted his head inquisitively. Gerard nodded, and Frank went first with his nose to the ground, the pale tip of his tail raised and quivering excitedly.

Gerard knew already that Frank had learned many of the back ways of the castle, for he had far more time for his own than Gerard did. He liked to come and go secretly from Gerard's quarters sometimes merely for fun, though they both knew perfectly well he could come and go there at least as he pleased. It was obvious, now, that he had learned a great deal more than that. The passages were lit only by torchlight spilling in through occasional cracks; Gerard's nose told him their way out took them eventually behind the kitchen storage rooms, and from there out into the stables, where they slunk out quickly to keep from spooking the horses.

Then they were standing in the shadow of a tree, looking down the bare rocky hill into the wood, the Wajdra Wood, _Gerard's_ wood; it was a vista he had drawn many times, but had never taken the time to see like this before, as a wolf, at night. He thought he knew, now, why his ancestor had claimed this wood for his clan.

The world was washed into stark shades of grey - the night velvety and murky, thick with rich trails of scent, the forest black below him and filled with the rustle of life. He heard the almost-silent pad of Frank's paws next to him and then Frank-the-wolf was at his shoulder, bending his head to nose at Gerard's paw, his ears high and playful. His eyes glimmered silver in the moonlight against the silky brown of his fur. Gerard lowered his head meaningfully and paused, waiting, then sprang forward without warning, like _flying_ , and heard the tiny gasp of Frank scrambling after to race him down into the trees.

He stopped running when he felt Frank snapping at his heels, turning swiftly and diving after him. Frank twisted in midair, but still went down, borne by Gerard's weight under a bush. They rolled, wrestling and panting and kicking, and chased each other a few times around a copse of oaks, before Frank rolled on his back and wagged his tail in friendly surrender, his tongue lolling out in a wolf-grin. It was strangely like his other smile.

Gerard sat on his haunches and tilted his face up into the wind, closing his eyes and breathing deep. He could smell the crowd of revellers, their sweat and their relaxed mood; the bonfire behind them on the castle grounds, the cooled remnants of the banquet, the sweetness of alcohol; nearer to hand, deer and hare and flowers and the overwhelming bouquet of grass, overlaid with the bite of evergreen.

He opened his eyes to see Frank quirking a brow at him.

Frank tilted his head at Gerard and bent closer to the ground, nostrils flaring. Gerard followed his cue, lowered his nose and breathed deep. It was like opening his other eye when it happened, and his head jerked back in surprise. It was like turning from human to wolf again: his black and white world suddenly filled to the brim with more colours than he knew the names for, and he could smell not just the forest around him and the castle behind him but the sap oozing in the grass stems crushed by his paws, the speed of Frank's pulse in his throat, the _age_ of the _trees_ \- how had he not seen it before? How had he not known that trees had an age? It was written right there in the bark.

He could smell the ocean, diluted with river, miles away; he could smell the clouds, and the weeks remaining until full moon. He could smell things he didn't have names for, too. He looked at Frank, and Frank's eyes glowed at him and he could smell mischief and loyalty. It was so dark they should both have been grey-shaded silhouettes, but Gerard could see every gleam of brown in Frank's fur.

Was this what the world was like to adult werewolves? Was it something everyone except Gerard already knew how to do? Why had no one told him about it?

Frank flicked his tail in invitation and started away, looking at Gerard over his shoulder, and his whole body changed colour, just a little, warming with anticipation. He wanted Gerard to follow now.

He was on the trail of a thin thread of smoke that snaked through the trees, much fainter and weaker than the one from the castle behind them. It grew gradually stronger as they followed it silently through the brush - circling the perimeter of a field of wildflowers which smelled strongly of magic once, and leaping over the stream Frank had pushed him into a month ago. Gerard had been to the nearby villages, of course, although not often; but never on foot before. The mental map his wolf-eyes and wolf-nose were building of the forest and the surrounding countryside was all new to him, every ravine and brushy slope.

Out of Wajdra Wood, they stopped and waited, looking at the shadows of the bonfire dancing at the far end of a long pasture and a cultivated field. The smell of smoke was strong, and the air throbbed faintly with what Gerard eventually realised was music; it sounded completely different to his wolf ears. There were humans and werewolves mingling around the fire, intoxicated and excited, some of them sleeping already, some of them angry. He stepped into the long grass and it closed around him, thick and sweet, smelling of sunlight and pollen, and Frank followed in Gerard's wake the whole slow way through the pasture and the field.

The hay had been mown and trampled at the lowest end of the field, in a wide swathe before a ditch. Under the bonfire lay the faint traces of old fires in years past, their ash beaten into the earth.

Gerard lost track of time as he watched (and smelled) the people moving, the werewolves of his clan and the few humans in the village - people were dancing, people were singing as they drank and splashed cider on the ground; other people were poking sticks into the fire, or lying tangled together on the ground, exchanging sleepy drunken caresses. He came back to himself when he felt Frank move - first to sit, then to lie stretched on his belly, head on his paws, close to Gerard's side. His ears were pricked and alert, but his eyes narrowed a little with an ear-flick of indifferent boredom.

Gerard sank down to sit next to him, close enough to feel the warmth from his body, and turned his attention back to the bonfire - the familiar fire noises, larger than usual; the smells of the food and alcohol people had thrown into the flames; a hint of blood that made his tongue prickle; the warm edge to the clear breeze that moved over the bonfire and over the human heads and combed through the grass like fingers through fur and then his face was full of it, smelling beyond the bonfire: the dirt of many feet, sun-warmed stone, rat, unwashed bodies, metal and leather and oil and another, smaller fire, and rabbit stew and beans and spices, and -

\- what _was_ that? Frank's head rose next to Gerard; his ears pricked with curiosity. Frank looked up with laughing, excited eyes, long and slanted and soulful in wolf form too, at Gerard's face, doubtless the picture of wolfish shock. And they were off again in silent accord.

This time, just as silent but much swifter, they raced along together, noses in the air after that elusive scent. They skirted the pasture, dove back into the wood and out of it, crossed a stream and bounded down a hill into a stand of trees, the scents growing stronger and stronger until they could chase the sound of Travellers.

The caravan was pulled up in half-circle within the trees, the smaller campfire built on fresh-cleared dirt in the center. Children were dancing in a circle; there was a man with a stringed instrument seated on the ground, singing, but when Frank moved closer to the firelight - not so near that he should be seen unless someone there had the eyes of an eagle - a woman standing near the guitar player bent and touched his shoulder, and they to look through the trees and the grass in precisely Frank and Gerard's direction, though their eyes were unfocused. The girls kept dancing, but the singers stopped and looked, and then even the children turned.

Frank was frozen where he stood, only a step or two forward, tense and a little fearful; he looked, suddenly, determined and fierce underneath, and Gerard knew he was thinking about their fight back in the castle.

It was hardly necessary to be an adult, or an expert on kingship, to know what to do, what was expected. Gerard took the step that put him even with Frank and then the next, and the next, until he was standing outside the shadows of the trees and the fire was glaring in his eyes, washing back the shadows, and Frank was pressed close against his side, barely a half-step back, frightened but determined, warm and trembling faintly with leashed vigour.

"Welcome, your Majesty," said the man.

"I was expecting you," said the woman. The firelight was behind her, and Gerard saw her black eyes only by the light of the moon. He knew that they were black, and he knew that he was seeing her in shades of grey, but what he actually saw was so much colour in the camp that the people were almost the lightest parts of it.

Emotions, age and history and bloodshed layered like paint over all the objects, outshining the glow of life. Except in this woman. She blazed as if the firelight were in front of her. She was rainbow-hued like the skin of oil on the surface of liquid, and her eyes - her eyes did not look black. They looked _white_.

A witch.

She bowed her head to him, a deep nod, and Gerard bowed his in return. As if he had given the signal and not she, the other Travellers seemed to come back to life; the dance ended, the stew was ladled into two fresh dishes, and a group of young boys came forward bearing long robes which they offered to Frank and Gerard so that they could change into people.

Frank looked at him anxiously and Gerard caught his eye and dipped his head, reassuring. They shrugged into the robes, took the seats offered them at the campfire, and took their first sips of the spicy rabbit stew.

"We are grateful for your unexpected hospitality," said Gerard. "This is Frank Iagar, who is sworn to my service. You seem to have the advantage of us, now."

"I know who you are, Wajdra," said the woman. "I am Lumia. This is Guta, and you can always claim the hospitality and aid of our camp."

Gerard blinked twice, quickly, and bowed again, carefully in his borrowed robe. "Thank you."

"And I knew you would be here," said Lumia, "tonight, at the solstice. It is just midnight. I did not know you would be so young."

"Thirteen." Gerard did not argue with her. He knew that it was young.

"The little one is younger still." She looked at Frank, and though Gerard watched their faces he could not decipher the messages that passed between them. "You value him no less than he deserves," she told Gerard, quite unnecessarily.

Gerard thought it possible she knew that he and Frank were holding hands tightly, though it was invisible, hidden by the sleeves of the too-large robes. If she were truly a Seer as powerful as he suspected, she must realise that they _wanted_ to hold hands regardless, and Frank was squeezing so tightly that Gerard could not have made himself let go.

"Your brother," said the witch suddenly, and Gerard tensed.

"Frank isn't my brother," he said, though, to check.

"No," she agreed. "But your _brother_ , who dwells in Transylvania - the young Lord of Zombescu, who is not wolf-man but a creature of the night -" she saw Gerard's face and smiled. "He is well, Majesty! We bring you a message."

The last letter Gerard had had from Michel had been a month past, for though Transylvania was not so very far away, finding couriers who would go from werewolf to vampire territory was nigh impossible; it was only the Travellers who came and went at will.

"He is well?" said Gerard.

"He was well this morning."

When Castle Zombescu was days' journey even as the crow flies. "The message?"

"He says he is learning to paint but not to sing, and that you must study your French if you will still converse with him, but he fears there may be no more battles for you to paint." She seated herself then on an empty chair near the fire. "Your brother the prince is an idealist, your Majesty. An old woman would say Romania has seen enough blood shed between vampire and werewolf to paint the mountains."

"I believe _I_ am an idealist," said Gerard.

The woman smiled at him and moved forward to put her leathery hand on his face. Her white/black eyes looked deeply into his, and she said, "You are." There was a note of surprise in her voice.

Frank was squeezing Gerard's hand hard enough to pain him. "But still I fear that he is wrong," Gerard said. "It may be that my idealism will not survive."

The man called Guta said, "It is a foolish man who does not know fear."

"Some would say that a King cannot afford to keep his high ideals," Lumia told them - and she was looking at Frank, too, not only at Gerard. "But consider: what man can afford what a King cannot?"

Gerard was still lost in his thoughts as they walked back through the moonlit wood, stopped to drink from the cold stream, and stole into the castle and the royal suite. The wind was colder and moving swiftly through the sky in the small hours, black clouds scudding over the moon, and the silence as they walked took on a new quality of exhaustion, though Frank did not slow or linger on the way; his tail dropped, his ears slow to twitch at sounds, the glow of his presence at Gerard's side dimmed, and Gerard could not help fearing he would make himself ill oWas this what the world was like to adult werewolves? Was it something everyone except Gerard already knew how to do? Why had no one told him about it?n the morrow.

Frank had been given for his own a chamber adjoining GerardOf course you would protect me, with your own life if need be, I know.'s bedchamber in the royal suite, one which had housed la said Lumia, dies-in-waiemting or guardsmen in generations past, and while far too bare and small for Frank's official dignity it was spacious enough for him at his present size, and he slept often there.

This night he did not go even so far, but sank onto his haunches on the fur rug by the cold embers of the fire while Gerard nudged shut the servants' door with his nose. The adjoining chamber was cold and dark, but the curtains were still open in Gerard's bedchamber and the room was lit with the dim moonlight passing through the clouds; and Gerard's great wooden bed was the warmest place in the royal suite, warmed hours since with hot water.

Too tired to change, Gerard leapt into the bed, nosing the furs aside and cocking his head at Frank. That was all the invitation he needed to spring up after Gerard, slow enough that his hind claws scrabbled for a moment at the edge of the bed before he followed Gerard into the nest of blankets and curled up with his nose under the tip of his tail. Gerard stretched out, feeling the cool sheets on his belly and the faint remnants of the long-cooled water bottle, and watched Frank's golden eyes fall heavily shut, his breathing even into the slowness of sleep.

***

On the fringes of Wajdra land, near the fortress of Frank's uncle Baron Iagar and on the border of the land claimed by the weak and dwindling werewolf clan Nechita, a human girl had gone missing in the night from a village, and it was being said that vampires from the Carpathians were to blame.

When it emerged she was pledged to a Nechita warlord the countryside were in arms: the Nechita gathering, perhaps preparing for attack on the vampires of nearby Castle Mondragon. Many of the Wajdra inclined to join them, and today an urgent messenger from Baron Iagar was waiting in the council chamber with Gerard's advisors. For a week young werewolves had been leaving the densely populated land around Castle Wajdra for the borders and last night a vampire had been killed on Wajdra land.

The situation was dry tinder waiting for the spark.

When the page arrived from Lord Meculai, the Chancellor, Gerard was closeted with Grigore, his father's chief strategist, discussing the Habsburg empire over a game of chess. Frank, who had been sick again and was absent from the pack, was biding silently by the door in his somber black and reds like any lord's personal guard, but for the fact that his eyes were half closed and his head tipped back against the wall as he listened closely.

Gerard followed him to the council chamber to receive the messenger, gathering Frank in his wake with a pleading glance which Frank interpreted correctly at once, coming alight with determination and protective fire and walking so close to Gerard's right shoulder - in his proper and formal place by right, but not one he often used - that when Gerard paused in the doorway he felt Frank's shaggy brown head bump into his shoulder.

He could see from the stiff posture and the looks in their eyes that his advisors were surprised and put on their guard to see Frank with him on such an occasion - a real time for decision, instead of a scheduled formal audience. Enric took his post inside the door, murmuring to the guard stationed there, and Frank stood behind Gerard's chair as though he were nothing more than a bodyguard.

The messenger, in travelstained clothes he had not yet paused to change, dropped to his knees. "Baron Iagar sends greetings from the Castle Iagar and his compliments with this message, your Majesty."

Gerard motioned for him to rise. "Have you brought word concerning the - unrest?"

"Majesty, the Nechita Prince has approached Baron Iagar in secret, unofficially, to ask safe passage through Iagar Valley for a secret force to reach Castle Mondragon. The Baron respectfully suggests, out of loyalty for your Majesty and in spite of his lifelong friendship with the Prince's father, that he doubts whether the motive behind the planned attack may not be to seize Mondragon land."

Meculai scowled, and a murmur sprang up down the length of the table. Old Lord Istvan actually leapt to his feet, knocking his chair back, with a thunderous look. "Why should the Baron descend to base slander of our Nechita cousins in favour of the thieving bloodsuckers who have justly incurred bloodfeud with their clan?"

Meculai, who looked less than pleased himself, rose to his feet to glower until Istvan reclaimed his seat.

Gerard nodded his thanks and asked the messenger, "Your pardon, and no insult is intended to your master when I repeat my Lord Istvan's question - what cause has the Baron to make this suggestion?"

"Your Majesty, my lord bid me tell you if you should inquire that the Nechita's strength are failing, that they fall to human incursion in their lands and have lost their ancestral keep, and that they have grown more aggressive against the vampire border in recent years. My lord has no certain knowledge, but speculation and common wisdom in the region indicate that the clan wishes to move to a better fortified position. Moreover, the circumstances of the girl's abduction indicated more violence than should have been necessary for a vampire even alone unless it were gravely injured, for their strength at night is such that no trace should have been left if they willed it."

Everyone at the table was frowning now, in thought or in anger. Gerard could smell the tension in the air rising and thickening.

"Vampires need no _cause_ for wanton destruction!" said Lord Istvan. "The young bloodsuckers hypnotise dumb creatures and leave them half-mad and poisoned to make a deadly meal for some unwary werewolf for sport. Are not their gangs in Prague and Milan famed for their cruelty and the iron fist of terror with which they rule the thieves and rogues of the city?"

"If unsubstantiated rumour is all he has to offer the King I wonder Baron Iagar troubled to send you," sniffed thin hook-nosed Lord Mielu, and dabbed his bushy mustache with a lacy handkerchief.

"Your Majesty, the Iagar's word on the subject of the Nechita is hardly trustworthy. Whatever he may say of friendship, there has been bad blood between those two castles for generations."

"Yet you suggest we should simply allow an armed force of Nechita passage through clan land, where they would be well positioned to seize Castle Iagar as well?"

Gerard had the messenger dismissed and let the sounds of argument wash over him for almost a quarter of an hour, in which time Gerard's second cousin Toduta, a vigorous young warlord who had been educated in Prague, led the argument against permitting the Nechita to pass through Iagar Valley and Istvan, Gerard's great-uncle by marriage, loudly advocated the raising of an army to the purpose of immediately joining the Nechita in warring against the mountain vampires.

Gerard waited until Mielu addressed him directly with "Your grandfather, your Majesty, was a great warrior feared by vampires the length of the Carpathians, and such an incursion as _this_ should never, I assure you, have occurred in his golden day, when the bloodsuckers kept their side of the mountains and we ours, except meetings on the field of honest battle with the vicious snakes!"

"We should not now be the strongest and greatest clan of the werefolk if your forefathers had not been such fearless men," said Lord Meculai, agreeing exactly but with the air of one delivering a precise set-down. He had the peculiar talent of making Gerard twitch with a creeping sense of having been offended even when he bestowed accolades: which was why his forceful and rather crushing dignity was by far the most effective tool Gerard could have hoped for in controlling the vocal ambitions of his advising council.

The silence after Meculai's pronouncements was the ideal lull in which to insert a declaration of his own. Gerard did not miss his opportunity, but said deliberately, "I am sure my grandfather was justly known and feared for his prowess in war, as much as respected as a just and wise leader."

"Precisely so, sire," murmured Istvan.

"And I am well aware that hasty and ill-planned campaigns of war were no more his habit than entering freely into unconsidered alliances, of course," said Gerard, "or the Wajdra territory should be no more than half its present size, weak and retreating in fear of the human greed for land as so many of our brethren must do. I have received no word of true evidence of any offence offered me or any of my clan by the vampires of Mondragon, or of any vampires at all excepting, perhaps, the poor bloodsucker who entered Wajdra Wood a week since."

He looked around expectantly, and in the ensuing riot of noise lords Istvan and Mielu attempted to shout down the recommendation of Lord Toduta that the clan could ill afford even a just war, let alone a fool's errand. Through all the noise not one piece of evidence or true argument was given him.

"I had thought increasing the holdings of the Iagar would be of _highest_ priority to his Majesty," said Cosmin in his deadly cold, bored-sounding drawl.

"By no means, my lord Cosmin," said Gerard sharply.

"Would you not prefer to think on it first, sire?" he replied courteously. "Perhaps your mind will be changed when you have had some time to, ah, consult with your most trusted advisors -" he left a pregnant pause, "- that is, who are not members of this Council."

"If you all truly wish that I should seek _other_ advice, I suppose I might," Gerard conceded. "But happily, I need not keep you waiting, for I have the fortune to have my most trusted advisor with me today. Frank, you might even be supposed to have a particular interest in the question." He felt Frank's grip tighten slightly on the back of his chair and leant back a little to look up over his shoulder into Frank's long slanted green eyes.

Frank bowed to him, and again to the others, "Your Majesty. My lords."

"What say you of the Iagar holdings, Frank?"

"It is not my place to say, sire, as I shall never inherit them," said Frank solemnly, but his eyes were twinkling.

"In that case," said Gerard briskly, "I need not concern myself with them either, I collect. Do you concur with your uncle's judgement of the Nechita and the Carpathian vampires?"

"Your Majesty, if anything, my uncle is too forgiving of the Nechita. They are a tribe falling into disorder and in the throes of desperation, striking out as a wounded animal."

"Elegantly spoken," said Meculai, looking down his nose, and Gerard could honestly not tell whether he meant it sincerely.

"Yes, thank you, Frank," said Gerard. "I think my course is clear, my lords. My good man, send to your master that no armies are to pass through Wajdra land, that any such action will be construed as an act of war. Fortifications in all the border provinces are to be at strength and watch is to be kept at all times at all the borders."

The discord created by this decree was sudden and urgent, if somewhat subdued after Gerard’s uncompromising attitude. The clamour fell at last to a murmur, then quickly silent when he stood.

"My word is final," said Gerard, staring into the eyes of each councilor in turn until they dropped their gazes in submission and took themselves out of his presence.

Meculai was the last to leave, pausing to execute a deep bow. "Your Majesty has very much the manner, if I may say so, of Queen Caterina, your grandmother." His face was impassive, but Gerard was at least mostly certain that that had been intended as a compliment. He did not relax until he was alone with Frank and the guards in the room, and then only so far as a long, shaky sigh.

***

When Gerard at last remembered his tutor for the afternoon and roused himself to ask after him, Frank replied from nearby, in a slow, sleepy voice, that he had told Enric to keep everyone out for the afternoon barring urgent matters of state.

Gerard laughed tiredly. "What other matters of state could there be?"

"None, of course. Are you as tired as you look after that?"

Gerard opened his eyes and stretched his feet over the arm of the couch toward the fire. "Why should I be tired, when you were the one who stood all the while? Do you want to sleep?"

Frank was lying on his belly, in boy form, on the bearskin before the fire, his posture lazy but his eyes wide. "It was so exciting I was not wearied at all," he said with a little yawn.

"That _is_ a pity," said Gerard seriously. "Do you suppose you might engage to sleep anyway to please me?"

"Why?" Frank enquired with a small mischievous grin, "do you want to draw me? I thought you would have filled your last drawing book completely by now, Gerard, for the day before yesterday there were already but two clean leaves."

"I should have if not for positively _all_ my time being taken up with _someone's_ endlessly boring birthday celebration."

Frank giggled. "I told my liege lord I wished only to be given a dragon but he insisted on a great deal of unnecesary fuss on account of its being my tenth year," he explained apologetically, and unfolded himself from the floor to go after Gerard's drawing book and charcoals.

"That was unhandsome of him. Did you at least receive your dragon?"

"Not at all," Frank admitted, and settled himself on the floor again in his former pose.

"How ungenerous. Will you sleep with your head in your hand like that without letting it fall and cracking it again on the flagstone?"

"He is not in the least miserly as a matter of course, so perhaps I should say that I have not received my dragon _yet_. I believe I can engage to keep awake until you have finished drawing."

"I wish you will put your head on the floor as it was before, and, no, tilt your chin towards me so that I may see your eyes. Like that, thank you. I believe you are right, that that is the only explanation. Perhaps he wishes to conserve it for a still more important occasion, for he cannot have another reason. It is impossible that he should think you too young if you have indeed finished your tenth year."

Frank knew better than to move, and would rarely even speak while Gerard drew his face, though he knew it did not spoil the picture. He smiled up at Gerard from his place on the rug, and did not even let his eyelids droop until Gerard told him he had finished drawing his head. By the time Gerard progressed to the bearskin, and the shadows on the floor, he was fast asleep. Gerard moved to the floor and made another, closer sketch of Frank's face, the eyelash-shadows on his cheeks and the contrast between weak sunlight and golden firelight on his hair. Then the book was full and he pushed it aside.

It was the first one he had filled entirely with nothing else but drawings of Frank, wolf Frank more often than boy Frank, but for such a mischief-filled fiery child, he had always shown remarkable patience in posing for Gerard, or being quiet for him or standing still as in the council chamber today. Gerard often reflected that it was Castle Wajdra which had robbed him of his childhood when he was Frank's age, and the only taste of it he had anymore was given him by Frank. What must he do in return but take Frank's from him? For Frank had been struggling to understand politics, and attempting to throw himself at grown wolves in defense of Gerard's honour (however unwarranted), at an age when Gerard had been with Nurse and Mikey all day in the nursery room, playing with wooden toys, drawing pictures, learning French and German, and listening to bedtime stories wrapped in Mama's and Papa's arms.

Bedtime stories were perhaps the only thing Gerard had not taken from Frank's childhood, but instead added to it. Gerard's own stories were by far Frank's favourites of any he ever heard, he said, but even at eleven Gerard had been perfectly capable to recognise the hero-worship in that pointed little face. It was a moot point, however, whether the praise were fairly earned, as they had no one to turn to for bedtime stories apart from each other, or Enric and his troupe of war veteran minders, whose stories of battle were sometimes wonderfully fascinating, but usually endless and always depressingly real, for bedtime fodder.

They could not have slept with the cub pack and their nurses even had they wished to, for the King's person was too exalted to share common sleeping quarters with children outside the royal household. Frank's blood was entirely too common to have properly been so close at Gerard's side, if not for the _fidelitate_ sworn so unprecedentedly early, when the custom was for young wolves to swear after their release from cub packs, earliest in their fosterling years in allied households, when it was presumed they might first feel moved to make that oath to a higher lord. A young lord's liege men were his closest friends, his most trusted advisors, his faithful and only bodyguards; and their privileges had been intended for lords of independent age and hardly for school boys. Gerard had been saved from years of isolated and lonely childhood only by the tradition of those privileges and the faint primitive magic of the oath.

A faint snore rose from the small, slight form on the bearskin rug, and the firelight played over his hair and the loosened cuffs of his red linen shirt. His childish face relaxed utterly in his sleep, his mouth open and round, but he looked happy, almost smiling, and Gerard smiled back at him unconsciously and tugged a stray strand of hair from the corner of his mouth and smoothed it back from his pale brow.

His face was still rounded under the jaw, but looking at him closely, drawing him so often, Gerard was well aware when he stepped back to think of it that his friend had changed a great deal in the past four years. His eyebrows held a more pronounced arch and hints of sharp cheekbones nudged towards the surface of his face, his chin growing proud, his neck growing long and his nose losing its round babyish snub in favour of an aquiline straightness. Frank's cousin Linica had grown into a stunning beauty, long of limb, elegant and vivacious, a talented swordswoman and accounted fierce in battle, and on her last return to the capital had had half the court at her feet, besieged with offers of marriage. The resemblance to her in Frank's face was grown more pronounced, now, his family's distinctive dusky beauty nearly as feminine and delicate on his features as on hers but, Gerard privately thought, infinitely more attractive when coupled to Frank's incandescent smile.

Frank was not quite his only friend, for he had come to realise with time that caution or shyness or fear of his strangeness had been the true cause of many of the cubs' standoffishness. The castle was full of people who were kind to Gerard, people who would gladly befriend the King, but perhaps it was something about Frank, or only that he had been too young at first to really understand, because Frank was the only one who had treated him from the very beginning like just another boy. Frank was consequently the safest place Gerard knew, the friend he trusted, the friend who knew _him_ , and even when he was angry at Gerard did not grudge him the open devotion which had been Gerard's only solace in the absence of his family these long years.

It was raining outside now and growing rapidly cooler within. Frank was drawing into himself in his sleep, closer to the fire, so Gerard changed into a wolf and insinuated himself along the edge of the bearskin with Frank between him and the fire, and Frank curled into his side with a sleepy murmur and tangled his fingers in Gerard's fur.

When Gerard woke up the fire was burning with renewed brightness and Frank was setting the poker down on the hearth and moving back to Gerard's side. "I didn't mean to wake you," he whispered, putting his hand casually on Gerard's neck. Gerard lifted his head and flicked his ear, and Frank laughed, "I know, I know, you are not tired, you were only sleeping for my sake, because you were _bored._ "

Gerard nodded regally and gave Frank a wolfish smile.

"You never have done that before," said Frank finally, so carelessly that he took care not even to look at Gerard as he said it, and his fingers had stilled their restless combing through the thick ruff at Gerard's neck.

It was true, Gerard had not before taken a stand to oppose his councilors, who obviously were disposed to think of him as a child still. Frank had never before been present in a meeting such as today's, but he knew well that he was right. Gerard turned his head to look up at him in assent.

Frank took advantage of the invitation to look into Gerard's eyes and see the expression himself when he asked, "You had planned it, had you not?"

Gerard tipped his head. He had sensed the moment coming for a long time, and he had long known that when he had done so there would be no turning back, after, from controlling the other councilors, from making his judgments openly, without deferring to them. Frank buried his hand in the fur ruff again and bit his lip in thought. "I am honoured," he said finally. Gerard blinked and turned his face down and away; Frank looked deeply thoughtful, somehow troubled, and it hurt a little in Gerard's chest to look at his face. He put his head down on his forelegs again and heaved a slow breath, closing his eyes, resisting the urge to lay his head on Frank's shoulder or his knee, for there was a fragile dignity to the moment and Gerard would not insult him by offering unwanted comfort.

The truth he was daily terrified that Frank would discover was that he relied more heavily on Frank than Frank on him, and always had done. Frank understood that his formal rank and his place at Gerard's side would be changing, now, that Gerard would not be entering that chamber alone any more now that his lord coucilors might, in a sense, be his enemies from this day forward, now that they understood he had declared his independence and claimed his sovereignty over them. Bending their wills was something the King must do alone, but never without his liegemen at his back, and Enric's far more physically formidable uniformed guards would no longer be an adequate support. In truth Gerard was terrified.

He let one shiver chase over his body, from head to tail, and felt Frank's hand tighten on the skin of his neck. "It was very well done, today," he said quietly but lightly, moving his hand slowly and carefully up his tense neck to the back of Gerard's head. "I could feel it, as all in the room could. They could not think of your age in the moment you met their eyes, Gerard. They all felt fear."

Gerard tried to relax at that. It was true they had obeyed his command in the end, and aside from that one poisonous barb aimed at Frank had argued little with him directly. Frank said, "You might well sleep the rest of the day, or at least until suppertime. You will not take it in your rooms, I know," he added wistfully. "Even though you are not tired, of course." Gerard could hear the tentative smile in his voice. "You are as tense as though you thought I would leap on you and go for the jugular at any moment."

Gerard thought at once, vividly, of play-wrestling, which they had done last in the wood at Midsummer. Frank's tail high, his eyes gleaming and his teeth bared in a playful growl – he could never be further from going for the jugular. Gerard huffed out a breath of laughter, and relaxed a little more, and then a great deal more than that when Frank's hand drifted to scratch gently at the base of his left ear. Gerard sighed a little and leaned into the touch, so Frank scratched a little more firmly. It was a familiar enough sensation, for the itches of one's ears were of paramount concern in wolf form, somehow, for they were very sensitive organs. But when Frank had finished his brisk scratching of each ear and Gerard was soothed into closing his eyes in momentary contentment, he astonished Gerard completely by murmuring, "I really think you must relax, Gerard; let me -" and cupping his little hand completely around Gerard's ear, warm and gentle, and folding it in on itself in a slow and exquisitely gentle massage.

A little sound of surprised pleasure escaped Gerard and he saw Frank bending over between him and the firelight, smiling broadly and saying, "You like it!" But then his small deft fingers found a sensitive spot at the tip of Gerard's ear – he hadn't even known it was _there_ \- and squeezed it gently, and Gerard could not even open his eyes anymore.

It seemed impossible that Gerard had had these ears all his life and not known how they could feel, as though they had been storing up itching and soreness in all their nooks and crannies forever, and with the careful teasing pressure of his fingers Frank was gently coaxing it out. They felt like heat, like liquid, like they could not possibly be ear-shaped any longer, like they triggered threads of hot sensation which led all over his body. Gerard had barely any command of his face, and was not sure even if his mouth were open. One moment he felt nothing but a single pinpoint deep in his ear, and the next he felt every inch of his body awash in warmth and pleasure, like the sweet crests of ecstasy in his most secret dreams, when he woke trembling and sweaty, his body pressing urgently into the bed. It was slower, and not quite as sharply exquisite, but just as overpowering, and when Gerard came back to himself his body felt limp and buzzing with unspent excitement and Frank was laughing delightedly near his ear, stroking gently down Gerard's spine.

"Truly, you have never felt it before, you must not have," he laughed, and his familiar voice so near to Gerard and his warmth blended together as Gerard opened his eyes and looked at him through the drag of lethargy, and felt that peculiar palpable twisting in his chest again, even though Frank did not flinch back from his gaze and his face was open and relaxed, not pained or selfconscious at all, and that was the worst of all. As the twisting feeling moved, as his belly grew heavy and hot and folded into itself, Gerard was miserably certain, gazing through Frank's clear eyes all the way to the bottom, that Frank did not feel it too, that he was utterly innocent and Gerard was suddenly more alone than he had been in years.

Gerard changed back to boy form and buried his face in the bearskin, suppressing a tiny shudder of fear and pain. "Indeed I have not," he managed to say without lifting his head. "I am quite taken by surprise and destroyed. I see now you need not go for the jugular – there are crueler weapons in your arsenal."

Frank felt nothing, heard nothing in Gerard's voice, perhaps, and just laughed and flung himself down on the rug at Gerard's side, close but not touching, and Gerard forced himself not to recoil. "My mama used to rub my ears when I was a pup," said Frank innocently. "Particularly when I could not sleep."

"I see it could prove useful," said Gerard. "But you need not think you will have the advantage of surprise another time. I perceive I will need to keep my ears well guarded," and he was even able to laugh along with Frank at the end of this speech.

***

_Three and a half years later_

It was two days from the full moon and nearing the first day of spring of the last year of Gerard's freedom, before his coronation and presentation ball at the start of the next Great Year, when the human messenger arrived from Queen Lisaveta – a young Traveller in black velvet and white silk, guarded by a party of twenty of his brethren mounted on fast horses and a full pack of wild Transylvanian wolves.

The cycles of the moon and sun aligned exactly only once every five years: this period was known as the Great Year, and at the end of the Wild Month, the ill-omened last lunar cycle of the Great Year which belonged to no solar year, was the period of greatest good luck. At the new moon one month before Frank's fourteenth birthday, on the Autumn equinox, would begin the new solar year and the new Great Year - the first new Great Year after the King's fifteenth summer (the age when any wolf was accounted an adult member of the pack). By long tradition, the elaborate coronation ceremonies for the King of the Wajdra would commence at sundown, lasting a full fourteen days until the presentation ball at the full moon, which would be attended by nobles from as far away as France, for the Wajdra, as the greatest and strongest surviving werewolf clan, were the natural leaders of the other clans, and their name was still known and feared far and wide.

"Transylvania is swelling with vampires fleeing from as far away as Greece, England, and Russia," said the messenger. "Humans are driving them from their dwelling places. Your numbers are dwindling from war and murder, your clan territories are shrinking, and several of your clans have died out into legend. Our friends and yours, the wolves, are being slain on sight by the hundreds. We have a common problem. Her Majesty Queen Lisaveta Dominique of the Wajdra, Countess Zombescu, invites her son the King to Castle Zombescu with all haste in the name of the Midnight Council and offers her guarantee of his safe passage through all Transylvania, safe conduct through any route, at any time of his choosing, with an honour guard of her personal choosing. The Midnight Council will meet at Midsummer, but her Majesty wishes to convey that they may be brought to accomodate the King if he prefers another time and if he sends word that he will speak with them of matters of politics and the future of both their races."

"How quickly might a message reach my mother the Queen?" said Gerard, frowning in thought. Frank moved closer to the throne, in case glancing up and meeting his eyes would remind Gerard to ask him something.

The messenger bowed low. "It may be that I can bring you word from her on the morrow, your Majesty."

Gerard smiled at him, suddenly and crookedly, like a lightning flash illuminating his face with humour and life. "Tell your companions that they are welcome to make camp on the royal land," he said, shifting in his seat and clenching his hands on the arms of the chair. He had made a decision; he must be going to make a pronouncement, and was nervous. Frank moved closer still. "Tell my mother that I will certainly be there by Midsummer, and – my good man, if you would invite your leader and your wisewoman to wait upon me at their convenience on a matter of some urgency?"

The messenger bowed and left the room, and Frank leaned close to Gerard's ear to whisper at once. When he was near enough to catch the hint of wolf scent clinging to Gerard he wondered in confusion what he could say, and at last he whispered only, "Midsummer?"

Gerard leaned sideways to say to him, "You know we travel light," his face serious but his eyes lit with excitement, his hand on the arm of Frank's chair at his side. Frank bit back his smile, stiffened his spine against the quickening of his heartbeat, and nodded once in understanding.

Lord Meculai at his place at the edge of the dias stood as straight as an iron rod. "Sire, may I ask you to clarify your intent?"

"Certainly, Meculai. My mother's message has much merit, and as a young monarch I can ill afford to ignore the summons of the Midnight Council - if only to know what they are planning in their secret coucils."

"If you mean to journey into vampire lands -"

Gerard's voice hardened. "I mean to stay in the household of my mother and my brother, surrounded by the loyal guards and liegemen of my own family even as I am here. Your Queen guarantees my safety with her own word." And if she wished to, thought Frank, she could certainly rip apart any would-be attackers rather more easily than he could, and eat the pieces, too.

The silence in the throne room was deafening. Meculai bowed low. "Your Majesty's word is law. May the Transylvanian vampires have as strong a faith in her Majesty the Queen as you have."

Gerard stood before he smiled at Meculai. It was a wintry smile, but Gerard knew nothing of its formidable effect; he meant it for conciliation as he replied, his voice still forceful and ringing, "My lady mother does not require that her subjects love her as I do and is no doubt satisfied to accept the rogue vampires' fear and certainty that, should they offend her honour, her vengeance would be merciless but by no means swift and they would not live to see the werewolf war they believe they should enjoy." He paused at the edge of the dias until Frank moved to his side and swept from the room without looking back.

Meculai's face was white.

"He is loyal," Frank remarked in a low voice.

Gerard turned his head, showing Frank the little crease between his brows: he was deep in thought.

The guardsmen at their backs fell back to the walls of the corridor as the doors of the Great Hall were opened for them by two others. "Lord Meculai," Frank explained. "He is a stiff old greyback and he does not love you, but he loved your father and your grandfather. He is loyal, the most loyal man on your council."

Gerard paused at the head of the great staircase and moved forward to look from the heavy stone balustrade over the tremendous expanse of silver-flagged floor. He tucked his hands behind his back, then sighed and lifted one to smooth the unruly locks of black hair out of his eyes, then turned to look down at Frank and seemed hardly aware of his movement when the hand flitted to his shoulder, wrapped warmly around the curve of bone so Frank felt its imprint through his fine velvet coat.

"Meculai is loyal to the throne and the royal house," Gerard told him. "Frank, _you_ are loyal to me. Even in the throne room, the difference is great. I know it is right to trust and rely on him as the King and so I do, but I cannot forget it. No man is so untrustworthy as a passionately loyal man whose loyalty belongs to anyone else."

Frank had thought about the dangers to Gerard since he was nothing but a little cub, for he had always understood that it was the lot of a liegeman to protect his lord with his life. Sometimes he thought he could feel the magic of _fidelitate_ like a band round his heart; but of course he knew it could not be, for the oath was not truly unbreakable, though it would rebound in curse upon the oathbreaker. Most of the time Frank thought the band around his heart was nothing but love – which truly was as unbreakable as the band felt. "When you put it in those terms I could almost pity a man who attacked you," he said with a wan smile.

"If he threatens the safety of my people it is my duty to show that man no more mercy than he deserves," said Gerard seriously, "but it is ever the call of his own honour or duty that lead him there; you _should_ pity him, perhaps."

Frank smiled broader. "I said almost. If he attacked you truly I am sure I should feel no pity at all until I looked at his corpse."

The hand on his shoulder slid down his arm to clasp loosely at his elbow. "Your duty would lead you to protect me, but you would feel that pity, I do not doubt it, Frank. Your soul is truly noble and sweet – it is why you are so loyal."

The band tightened so hard around Frank's heart that he wondered he still could breathe. He bowed, just slightly, and closed his eyes. "Sire, the wellspring of my loyalty is all in you."

There was a little silence. "I told you not to call me that," Gerard murmured, almost inaudible, and when Frank looked up he was looking over the hall again. "I hope for both our sakes that none of my enemies prove to have liegemen so loyal as you, Frank."

Frank laughed, but he hoped so fervently, too.

Much of the Court were gathered below in the Great Hall or out on the lawn for the evening's hunt. The hunting parties were large every night in late Spring, and branches of the clan from its other fortresses were still here from the royal banquet marking Gerard's eighteenth birthday a fortnight since. It was important the royal lands near the Castle were not over-hunted, so it was the job of the royal huntsmen to assign places in the royal hunting party on the basis of precedence, service, length of stay in the Castle, and a number of other arcane factors. Gerard himself led the main hunt only rarely for he thought it would be a pity to waste the far superior skills of his huntsmen when, as he put it, he was still such a beast as to be more comfortable on two feet than four.

But Gerard assumed his wolf form, now, without reluctance, and even when Frank did not. He had mastered the control of his werewolf senses years ago and declared himself uncomfortable more from habit or modesty than truth. "The truth is that you prefer to stand at the dias and look down on the people and if you must stand amongst them, you would not have so many," Frank murmured, for Gerard's ears alone.

"You know I am happy enough to face the people," Gerard murmured back, smiling over Frank's shoulder at an elderly lady.

"You crave it, but you require to be alone often to rest your mind," said Frank.

Gerard turned his whole attention on Frank and smiled enigmatically, that warm curving smile that felt like kindling being slowly consumed with flame in the pit of Frank's belly. "Perhaps I merely remember being taught to hunt with fondness, and preferred the hunting parties of my childhood to these grand formal affairs where everyone looks to me for leadership."

Frank himself had taught Gerard to hunt, play-wrestled with him in the forest and taught him to cover his tracks, and to move silently through the brush, to follow a scent on earth, water and air. It had been years before Gerard had ever consented to join the hunting parties of the cub pack. "May I lay the blame at this hunting master's door, then, for the reluctance to lead I sense?"

"By no means," Gerard grinned. "For he was the greatest soft-heart, and let countless deer escape once he caught sight of their big brown eyes, so that I never could be certain of getting any dinner if I did not kill it myself."

Frank had to laugh at that, for it was very nearly true. He owed many meals to Gerard.

The Court streamed slowly through the wide castle doors onto the lawns, where a pavilion stood, and the hunting party gradually melted from the constellations of coloured silks and muslins in the pavilion into a writhing sea of glossy furs, brown and gold and black, white and grey and copper-red. The wolves formed up on the lawn, the huntsmen at the head behind Gerard, the one purely black wolf in the pack, and Frank at Gerard's shoulder. The air was roiling with the scent of excitement.

When Gerard started for the wood, a silence fell over the lawn like the blast of a trumpet, sudden and complete, clear and arresting. The thick glossy green leaves of the forest swallowed him; Frank nosed after him in his very footsteps through the brush, quick and careful, ears swivelling and nose down, savouring the dense smells and sounds of the wood. The hunt spread out, nearly invisible, a whisper of deadly movement at their heels.

A hunt could be fast or slow; today Gerard was lost in thought, and led the hunt in silence to wet their feet in the stream where it bent in a sharp elbow, a place where he and Frank had often played together, and up to the top of a hill to gaze down over the slope. Gerard posed instinctively there at the peak of a great stone which thrust up through the earth like a broken bone through flesh, head high, the wind teasing his inky fur, his eyes glowing and distant even from Frank, when he finally tensed and sprang down in one long liquid leap, and Frank scrambled on his smaller legs to keep his place at his side.

It was the eldest huntsman Mugur who first caught the scent of the grandfather stag they hunted, but Gerard kept his place at the head of the pack as they fanned out silently through the underbrush. It was Gerard who made the first leap, Mugur darting in on the flank and Frank close to Gerard's side, always to protect him, and Istvan and a young provincial warlord closing quickly after. The circle tightened and the stag's eyes rolled; the gash on its side and the gash on its neck were bleeding freely, but it reared and its steel-sharp hooves lashed the air, while Gerard twisted at its shoulder and Frank, smallest of the pack, slipped under its white belly, straight for the neck. A hoof grazed his side, he could feel the blood coming, and before he could twist entirely away, panting with excitement, a growl rang through the wood, so fierce it seemed to shake the bowl of the sky, and Gerard was there, throwing Frank to the ground so he fell with a yelp, tumbling head over tail and fetching up breathless on his back, one eye open and on the deer lying broken on the ground, the skin torn away in a great blood-blackened mess of meat and fur on its neck, its dark eye glassy and empty.

Frank rolled awkwardly to get his legs beneath him and sit up, feeling the sharp pull of the broken skin as the blood seeped slowly into his fur. The injury was not severe, but the censure in Gerard's eyes as he stood over him was. Frank would have glared at him, in boy form; but he felt that look of Gerard's like this with every bit of his body, and submitted with no hesitation to the censure as well as the inspection that came next, Gerard's nose gently parting the fur over his ribs and the rough wet tongue gliding over the wound, licking up blood to feel the extent of the injury.

Frank bowed his head in guilt, for he had indeed been foolish, and not ready, not quick enough to dodge under the deadly hooves, and Gerard had saved him, he knew it was true, from at least a much worse wound.

There was no anger in Gerard's posture, though, or his smell, when he dipped his head and touched his nose to Frank's, a cool kiss of reassurance that made Frank's wolf heart beat faster just as his boy heart would have at the touch of Gerard's lips. He couldn't help the warmth that chased through him, the desperate impulse that made him lift his nose, nuzzling back, before he heaved to his feet and followed Gerard to the stag to fill his mouth with blood and tear loose his ceremonial bite of meat.

Adrenaline still coursing through his body, Frank hardly felt the pain once he was on his feet again, and the soft strength of fat and muscle and flesh, blood still flowing in it as it melted on his tongue, filled him with vigour so he could feel the life of the stag bursting in his mouth, spreading through his belly.

Gerard's mouth was bloody when he lifted it from the neck of the stag, glistening wet on the black of his muzzle, and his mouth gaped wide and his pink tongue reddened as he licked it clean; there was a splash on his ear, a bit of mud on his flank, blood on his paws, and Frank just stood there and looked at him, drank in the majestic black lines of him, like a silhouette against the sun, his glowing green eyes, his strong deep chest, the taut arch of his belly.

Frank wanted to lick his face clean, as he could have when they were pups. He wanted merely to touch him. Looking at Gerard too long was like burning his eyes with smoke, like breathing the sweet smell of burning herbs at a campfire and feeling them tremble through his whole body and loosen his head from his neck.

He followed Gerard, and the nobles followed them, back through the wood while the huntsmen and their servants took on human form behind them to cut the deer into pieces and bear it back to the castle for dinner.

The King of the Wajdra was, in essence, a warlord, though his clan were the largest nation of magical people in Europe, and his tacit political leadership over the other werewolf clans made him very nearly an emperor in importance. The Kings and Princes of human lands were attended by body servants, chamber servants, servants to open the doors, servants to catch the food and another set to serve it and another set to lay the table, servants to lay a rug on the earth so their shoes might never touch the ground. But though he claimed the allegiance of all his clan, and all the lesser noble Families and clans which had sworn themselves into clan Wajdra in the golden reign of Gerard's great-grandfather, the Wajdra lived close to the earth, close to the wood. The King did not lay the table, but he opened the door; and he did not dress himself, but it was none but his first-ranking liegemen and the liegemen of his father who entered his chambers.

It was inside the door of the castle that Gerard, changing back to human form already and rubbing irritably at the streak of blood above his eyebrow, turned to Enric and snapped quickly "Enric, have the healer sent to my chamber with all speed."

Already Frank's head spun with sleepiness, which could just as well have been from the race through the wood as from the bleeding welt on his ribs; but he stood close to Gerard's side so he could feel Gerard's thigh stir his fur as they walked. He did not change back, for he knew without the fur matting slowly with blood it would gush to stain his fine muslin court tunic and possibly ruin his velvet jacket besides.

Gerard's hand fell casually to his side, as if by mistake, but Frank felt the nervous drumming of his fingers twitching in rhythm against his neck, far more anxious than Frank could find energy to be. He pressed closer to Gerard's side to reassure, but his tongue was lolling, his breath short as they mounted the wide stone stairs, and he felt Gerard tense, heard him mutter under his breath, and for an awful moment feared the humiliation of being lifted and carried, even as he thought wistfully how he would like to lie in Gerard's arms - the only place he really felt safe, when he was ill or weak.

A young werewolf new to the castle's pack of cubs, his tunic half covered in a wide satin Court page's sash, stood waiting at the top of the stairs with a deep, awed bow. "Your Majesty, the Travellers - " he paused uncertainly when Gerard did not slow nor spare him a glance.

"Is it urgent? Then follow," said Gerard, and the page scurried to keep up.

"The chief and the wisewoman have come and send with all compliments and wishes for your Majesty's health and good fortune that they desire an audience," he said, his thin voice piping from behind them as he struggled to keep up.

"The wisewoman!" Gerard muttered to Frank. Frank was out of breath, but tried to telegraph through the pressure of his body against Gerard's leg that he was hardly severely enough injured to require the attention of a healer, let alone a witch. Gerard did not appear to notice. "Go at once and beg the wisewoman if she will come to my quarters! Bring her there at once if she assents. Tell them that my liegeman was wounded at the hunt. Of course, escort the chief as well if he wishes!" When the page seemed to hesitate, Gerard added, "At once!" and the boy executed a hasty bow and darted past them with indecorous haste.

Enric was waiting within the royal quarters, two guardsmen without, and the Court healer within Gerard's bedchamber itself.

"It is Lord Frank," Gerard said before the man could rise from his bow; "he was grazed by the hooves of the stag."

Frank changed at once, standing close to the foot of the bed where he could lean his weight on one hand when he slumped with light-headedness, and old Nichifor and Gerard were both there, rescuing the shirt and easing him to a seated position on the bed, for there was a fresh stab of pain when his flesh melted and reformed, as he'd known there would be. He healed faster in man form, but it always hurt more.

"Lie down," Gerard urged. "See that he does not overstrain himself again," he told Nichifor sharply, but the old man just clucked fearlessly behind his grizzled beard, a long veteran of Frank's injuries and endless recuperation periods.

"Let me inspect the wound, your Majesty - my lord Frank, if you _would_ ," and he plucked Frank's hand away from his aching ribs by the wrist and stretched his arm out. It was like a burning iron dragged across his skin in the path of the wound all over again, and Frank gritted his teeth against it, but the blood was already slow, Frank could see even craning down his chest; it hardly flowed.

Gerard stood there in his black velvet coat, all the ribands torn apart by his own impatient fingers and ivory lace crumpled and sweat-damp at his throat, his blouse half-loosened from his breeches and stained with a smear of blackening blood. His hair hung like a curtain in his face, and his shoulders were high and rounded in anxiety, his hand inside his collar, rubbing ceaselessly at his neck.

"It hurts more because the cut had already dried closed when I made the shift from wolf to boy again," Frank told him, when he was sure enough of his own voice that he could force it steady. "But really it is the merest -"

"It," said Gerard in a voice of ringing royal command dripping with scorn, "is a _bleeding gash_ , and you half fainted with pain when you changed."

Frank bowed his head, but lifted his eyes, searching for Gerard's gaze. He met and held it when he said, "I am quite weary, but it is not so very deep, I assure you."

Gerard gave a snort of royal derision, but he made no protest when Nichifor cleaned and bandaged it, and he held Frank's gaze until it was done, and held his hand while he drank two measures of aged brandy.

Quite evidently Gerard had entirely forgotten the Travellers waiting outside his bedchamber, but when Frank gathered his strength and forced his eyes open to remind him, Gerard soothed him quiet again and said nothing but "Will you have a rug, or will you be too warm when I have built the fire up again? And will you wake for dinner?"

The fur rug was pulled over Frank to his chin, the curtains drawn, and Gerard touched his face, cool fingers damp and sticky with sweat, a gentle touch that lingered as poignantly as the sting of brandy in his throat and the thin throbbing cut on his ribs.

***

Though the wound itself had closed in time for dinner, Frank's slowness to recover kept them mired in endlessly polite discussions of the coming summer an entire week, while the Travellers camped in the low pastures abutting Wajdra Wood grew increasingly restive, as did Frank.

Gerard was closeted half the week with ambassadors, tradesmen, his councilors, the chiefs of the castle guard, his vassal lords, his huntsmen, the wisewoman, the barefoot human boy who came to his audience dressed in rags, the farmers whose livestock were being thieved by vampire or wolf, his least trusted councilors alone, his most trusted councilors alone, and finally, Lord Meculai and all his concern and disapproval.

It was only half of these meetings at most that Frank was present for. "Had you not so inarguable an excuse, nothing could make me endure it without forcing the same fate on you," Gerard told him as they walked together from the council chamber, Gerard to another audience with Lord Mielu, Frank half-asleep from exhaustion and on his way instead to his bed.

"I shall be filled with ennui, then, for your sake," Frank told him, and broke off to yawn. "The King's shoulders must bear the heaviest load." The words were spoken lightly, but for all that it was true.

Less true was the claim to ennui: Frank disliked Gerard's being away from him, even on the rare occasions he was angry or tired of company, for he must still worry after his safety then, but his displeasure was composed of anxiety and a little loneliness, and very little ennui. His loneliness for Gerard could never be soothed by another in his stead, Frank long had realised, even as a cub, when a long day of play with the pack left him querulous and restless, even those days when the other cubs chose to overlook his age, his birth, his size, and his country manners.

Frank was lettered and versed now and had learned the nature of _fidelitate_ well enough to recognise the itch of it in the back of his mind which quietened only with Gerard safe under his eye. But he knew himself well enough to know that was not all it was, as Linica had told him all those years ago when he brought the question to her, too shy to ask it of Gerard. Frank had fourteen summers now, or at least he had fourteen springs, and he understood well the difference between the soft flutter of spontaneous anxiety and the dry itching of magical anxiety, the sticky lassitude of ennui and the restless irritability of boredom, the tired ache of loneliness for company and the steady feverish burn of longing for Gerard.

Without being lonely in the least - for he had seen hundreds of people that day, talked an hour or more with Enric in the morning, and sat at Gerard's right hand through a meeting of his councilors - he could feel that burn. Without even being alone he could feel it. Frank drooped with tiredness, all his energy having run dry an hour since, and watched Gerard walk away, a straight figure all in black flanked by liveried werewolves, broad of shoulder and long of arm, towering a full head above him. It made Frank tireder still, that feeling, burning dismally like a damp smoking fire under the leaden rainclouds of his exhaustion.

He slept until he wakened in the evening gloom, and rolled out of bed still in boy form - it took too much magic to change, the witch had told Gerard, and it was using his magic which made Frank exhausted, so he was not to change for several days still - and pulled a fur robe over his creased formal clothes. He let himself out through the handsomely furnished anteroom in his personal quarters to the much grander royal sitting room.

Enric gestured him through the heavy double doors to the royal bedchamber, where Gerard was seated before a low fire and marking lines of ink on papers strewn over the flat top of a massive oak travelling chest, his lips moving silently as he spoke to himself. His concentration was so complete, as it often was when he was drawing, that though his eyes saw Frank's entrance, he did not glance up, did not even realise, yet, he was not alone.

In Frank's chest the band clenched slowly, like a hand wrapping carefully but completely around his heart, while the burn of longing cooled, just a little, drinking in the sight of the King with his hair awry, feet bare, his black jacket crumpled behind him where he sat without Frank to take it away for him. Frank curled himself quietly in the corner of the low couch, drawing his fur robe close, and studied Gerard freely, unobserved, as he frowned and murmured over his writing, pushing the oil-bright strands of black hair away from his face only to have them fall back in his eyes again.

This privilege, the luxury of filling his eyes with Gerard in long stretches of secret, unguarded moments, was hardly a rarity, for Frank was daily at his side, yet Frank often thought it was his most cherished possession. He bit his lip and rested his cheek on the satin arm of the couch, and regarded through heavy eyelids the vulnerable slope of Gerard's pale neck, the round shape of his shoulders under his fine linen shirt, the full flesh of his thighs and curve of his rump in his fitted twilled breeches. Under the fur robe, in the glow of the fire, Frank could not feel the damp bite of Spring, just the mounting heat in his body, lazy and luxuriant for all its elemental urgency.

He couldn't do as he wished, couldn't stretch out on his back before him and show Gerard his belly and beg to be touched, his hands - paws - tongue - lips - body. But he could look at him all he wished.

Until Gerard laid his quill aside carefully and lifted his head, turned to look at Frank with a gentle smile of surprise and pleasure, and the firelight cast deep shadows under his chin, gilding his pointed nose and reddened cheeks, and the longing burnt again stronger than before, a scorching fire, a burn not like warmth but like a wound. Frank smiled and sat up, and called for dinner for both of them.

By the end of the week Frank was daily in the guards' armoury, sparring with swords and hands and teeth and claws until the sweat poured off his body, and he was pronounced by the witch to be more filled with life than any other in the room, "Like a fire," she said dreamily, but her eyes were wide and bright, her gaze cool and knowing. "A fire which burns like a weapon in your hand, or the hand you place it in. Know the hand that guides you, little one, little lord wolf. And you, King Wajdra, know it too. He is healthy now, as fit a warrior as any I ever saw."

Old Nichifor had pronounced Frank fit to fight already, and it was the leave of the Travellers Gerard had waited for, not the approval of Lord Meculai, which, as he said, he might have waited all his life for rather than left the castle without an army at his side. A horse laden with clothes and weaponry joined the wagon train, and Frank and Gerard joined the pack of simple half-tame wolves which mingled and travelled with the Travellers. Enric and two young guardsmen, Coliu and Iorgu, followed the first day and night, as far as the river Siret dividing them from the Carpathian mountains, where the werewolves turned back and the Travellers made camp at dawn.

"Your blood protects you now, Sire," said Enric gruffly, a leathery hand on Gerard's shoulder, "your father's fearlessness as much as your mother's kin. May the moon bring you only their passion, and none of their fortune, until I may stand between you and danger again."

He turned to Frank. "I would not be so presumptuous as to entrust his Majesty's care to you. Trust in your instincts. What you have to do, you will do. My lord." And he astonished Frank with a deep bow of respect, so Frank could see the silver-laced crown of his head before he turned back with his men.

Enric who had guarded the door where he and Gerard slept and played, talked him to sleep, carried him when he was sick, the one voice of authority he had infallibly heeded when he was first brought to the Castle as a pup. Enric had protected them both what seemed like all Frank's life, but with that brush of his huge hand, that deep bow of his head, he had given to Frank the formal obeisance due his rank: the head of the royal guard to the first liegeman of the ruling King.

Frank had known it for years, but when he lifted his head wide-eyed to look at Gerard then, he realised it for the first time - Gerard was _his_ , his to guard, and he was Gerard's only to command, his duty due to no one but the King. It should have made him dizzy, Frank thought, or frightened. Instead he only felt relief, soothing and cool in that dry itch of _fidelitate_ in his mind, and he smiled.

Gerard smiled back at him, quizzically, and behind them they heard the quick throbbing music of a guitar, and before them the tails of their guardsmen vanished into the empty landscape spread at their feet. Alone with the wolves and the Travellers and the sky, Frank thought, why not? And leaned forward to put his arms around Gerard's neck.

Gerard enfolded him at once in an embrace without hesitation or speech; he seemed pleased but not surprised. Frank could feel Gerard's chin rest on his head, and his nose was buried in the crease of Gerard's neck, the smell of clean sweat and travel dust all around him.

"You shall not regret bringing me, though it is your blood which must protect _me_ now," Frank told him quietly.

"I could not go without you," said Gerard simply, "even if I had to carry you every step over the Carpathians. It is well that your laziness is at an end."

Frank refused the bait with a small smile, unwilling to tempt his luck. Gerard would not like it when he found Frank unwilling to sleep on his command wherever and whenever he wished, simply because he fancied Frank might take ill. Instead he spoke lightly, "If I can serve my King only by entertainment it will be my honour to do so."

"Indeed," said Gerard then, in a much different voice, "I _would_ not travel alone, even under my mother's guarantee of protection. I told you years ago, Frank, that there was no one I would sooner trust to protect me than you, and it has always been true."

"I believe you now that my dignity is not wounded," said Frank, and extricated his head in part from Gerard's embrace. "I understand now, too, that your trust in my loyalty was hardly a testament to your belief in my ability."

Before he answered, Gerard tilted his head down, frowning, to see Frank's face, and only relaxed and laughed when he saw the smile there. "You have penetrated my half-truth," he admitted cautiously, and a little dimple creased his cheek. "But certainly I never doubted that you would most earnestly and passionately _try_."

Frank still stood comfortably in the circle of Gerard's arm, a place most familiar, though Gerard had freed one hand to gesture in illustration as he spoke. The wind blew now that the sun had crested the horizon with a damp, dewy chill. Frank would gladly have changed for the sake of his fur coat if only he could speak in wolf form, he thought, squinting over Gerard's shoulder at the milky clouds turning dazzling and jewel-coloured with light, but they stayed in sleepy silence until their faces cracked with yawns. Then they stumbled back to the camp and into a wagon at the witch's invitation, and curled up gratefully, wolf-shaped, in a furry tangle on a pile of rugs lying before a small cast-iron stove.

***

Though one of the Travellers termed it foolhardy to travel with so precious a burden as Gerard through vampire territory at night, in the height of the vampires' powers, the alternative was sleeping and letting their guard down at night, in the height of vampire powers, unless they required no rest. Frank suspected the Travellers - who were long allies of both vampires and werewolves - were more concerned about being caught in battle than about Gerard's safety, but:

"That is your duty, not hers," Gerard pointed out. "The Travellers are my friends and allies, not my subjects. I bow to a wisewoman -"

Frank filled in the end of the saying, "-As does any wise man."

Their path through the mountains was somewhat slower for the humans than for the wolf pack, who vanished at night almost without exception, and tended to reappear around dawn for scraps of food and to sleep at the remains of the fire. Still it was faster than the path of a man on foot, and shorter than the path of a werewolf alone.

"The land belongs to the werewolves and the vampires," a young matron told Frank as she tended the fire, "but the ways belong to the Travellers."

"Is it your people's secret lore? Do you have your own ways or do you share them with all the other clans?" Frank asked her.

"The Ways are not a lore, little lord wolf," she smiled, and cupped her hand to offer him a ladleful of stew with a slice of sausage floating in spiced oil on the surface; Frank lapped it up eagerly and she gave him a maternal smile and ruffled his hair. The wisewoman of the tribe had dubbed him thus, and all the Travellers now called him nothing else.

"The Ways?" said Frank, carefully pronouncing the capital he could hear when she spoke.

"A Way is not a secret, but a place; it is a hidden path, but not a secret one."

"They say the man who finds a pathway of the Travellers alone by design or chance is either the luckiest or the poorest of men," said Gerard suddenly, turning away from the mountainous craggy horizon to squint against the glare of the fire. His face was still remote and Kingly, his voice quiet, and Frank turned his body only a little to watch him from the corner of his eye without intruding his presence on a royal reverie.

"He is the poorest if he chance not to find his own pathway again," said the woman, and a gust of wind blew a veil of smoke between her and them, a fluttering white mask through which her eyes gleamed like the black of bottomless water. "He might find another's and end in peril or he might wander the Ways forever, unmoored from land and people, and die without seeing a home again, his own or any other."

"Is he the luckiest if he dies quickly then?" said Gerard dryly.

She laughed, "No, your Majesty, he is the luckiest of men if he loses the Way as soon as may be after he finds it."

After their meal the children tried to teach Frank and Gerard their dancing. Gerard shook his head at them, his attention all on the music, a lone guitar and only the men singing, led by the throaty, mournful voice of one little old man. Gerard sang only when he and Frank were well and truly alone, when even Enric would not hear. His voice was high and sweet, but it had the same uneven tone, the same powerful sadness as these songs. Frank knew this was why he was so affected by them, his eyes wide and glazed, his arms wrapped tight around his knees.

Frank danced with the children until he was tired, though they laughed at him, and then he danced again, without ever taking his eyes off Gerard. It was not only their isolation, the burden of his responsibility, or his natural worry about vampires; Frank had been itching and on edge for days, jumping at the slightest sound and hardly willing to let Gerard out of his arm's reach. He felt a presence like a looming thunderhead pregnant with lightning prickling along his senses, and insisted they sleep in wolf form for its keener senses and reflexes.

It seemed that Gerard had not a thought to spare for anything but the music, or perhaps that he had forgotten that as well and wandered in some world of memory or imagining. When Frank stopped dancing, shaking loose children from his wrists and elbows, and bent forward to catch his breath, though, Gerard turned his head with only a moment's pause, and though he said nothing there was cool silent command in his gaze.

"Your worry is unwarranted," Frank assured him in a low voice, leaning close to speak under the pulsing wail of the music, "I am not overtired." He was happy enough, though, to return to Gerard's side, and took wolf form to stretch out on his belly in the glow of the fire while the children danced on and their shadows played over him and the wind shifted, brushing aside the warm, damp smell of stew and taunting him with the scents of living things in the forest, earth and grass, crisp mountain wind, distant rainclouds and, occasionally, the subtle sour vinegar-blood smell of vampire.

By sundown nightly the wagons were packed, the wolves gathered silently in the fresh-trodden dirt of the campsite, the children vanished inside and the campground was silent.

As the caravan travelled its narrow, often invisible Way, the leaders of the wolfpack paced easily near the lead wagon, vanishing occasionally into the trees but always returning. They silently commanded all the other wolves, and sometimes the people, too, after communing with the wisewoman. She was the only one they condescended to be touched by, even when the female of the pair was wounded; Frank, in wolf form, offered to aid her and she stared motionless at him, frightened and neither challenging nor submissive, until Gerard nudged Frank's head to break their gaze and she moved silently past. ("Traveller wolves are not like wild wolves," Gerard told him later. "They obey naturally, even the strong ones, but they must learn to be friends with werewolves.")

Many of the other wolves rode occasionally in the wagons, or perched with the drivers for all the world like tame dogs; it was with these that Frank and Gerard often found places, for to wander far from the wagons at night on foot would have been the greatest folly.

The moon was high and bright, a silver coin in a clear sky, and as the wagons moved through the narrow curves of the rocky mountain road the mules picked their way as carefully and slowly as a man might walk. Wolves moved back and forth between the wagons, and the warrior wolf with the white mask ringing her eyes leapt lightly to the seat next to the driver on the wagon where Frank and Gerard rode.

Frank looked up in case she carried some message, but she was only vibrantly alert, like a plucked guitar string still shaking long after the instrument is laid aside.

When the sudden silence ripped through the air she came to her feet, hair rising on her neck, just as Gerard and Frank on the step did the same. Some time in the few minutes since Frank had looked, the lead wolves had both vanished from the head of the lead mule, and the path when he looked forward and back was lined with wolves, almost the whole pack, ready to nip ankles back in line if the mules should shy on treacherous ground.

The wind picked up, a soft sigh, a whisper - a rustle in the trees, a rustle that was _not_ wind, and a rock fell somewhere, skittering and echoing as it bounced down the mountain. Frank's head turned but he could only hear a direction and the sounds were _moving_ , but on another gust of true wind the smell was on him suddenly, thick and sickly, choking like a strong liquer. Vampire. There was a loud sound in the trees ahead, near the path, whipping branches and leaves, a low crack of air under huge wings, and a high scream pierced the night.

 _Blood._ The smell of blood was everywhere, freshly spilled and _vampire_ , and then the dark shape flew out from between the trees. Great wings were silhouetted for a moment against the sky, and then the huge black owl strained and rose and flung from it the bloody form - four-footed and dark, a wolf body the bloodsucker had worn, it twisted in the air and tumbled to the ground below the path.

A mule reared, a wagon swayed, and the chief wolves were out of the trees then, running, and the pack moved like liquid, like one wolf, hunting the wounded intruder. For a moment a pale, grotesque human form staggered to its feet, the face white as death, the torso red with blood. The other vampire in its owl form swept back again and the wolves closed nearer, and with two more broken steps the wounded vampire hissed and vanished. A bat rose into the sky and fluttered furiously away into the night, the black owl shooting after it with a parting cry.

The wagons creaked where they stood; the smell of vampire blood lingered in the air, and the wolves nosed around where it had landed. Gerard changed, and he hunched on the seat while the driver leapt down and went to the mule's head to hold it. "My mother sent him," he said in a small, tight voice in which Frank alone could hear the tremor. "It seems you need not protect me alone."

Frank changed too, and leaned on the worn wooden seat for a long moment while his heart pounded and his mind swirled furiously. "How close did it come before the scream?" he wondered aloud.

Gerard looked down at him and shook his head.

***

Just before dawn on the eleventh day the wagons were parked in a tight circle in a rocky clearing ringed with tall narrow pines, like fingers or blades reaching into the sky. Frank could smell the sunrise creeping up on them before the light bled across the sky like blood through cloth. It was the last place to make camp before a steep climb up the face of the mountain range looming over their heads.

The Travellers were silent and busy, climbing over and under the wagons, children rushing to and fro with water, women shaking rugs and folding linens, their skirts wet with last night's rainfall on the grass. The campfire kindled reluctantly in chill muddy earth, and Gerard stood near the edge of the clearing, where most of the wolves had gone. Their eyes gleamed all around from between the trees, where it was still dark as night to human eyes, and Gerard stood almost still, his black hair and black garments one with the shadows. In wolf form Frank tasted the air, followed a scent a few steps away into a thorny bush heavy with roses. He could smell their invisible vampire guardian nearby again, a now-familiar sour tang over the flowers' sweet perfume.

"Stay with me," Gerard said suddenly, and Frank turned to look at him. His face was serious-looking and his eyes in shadow, and the corners of his mouth turned down. "We are in Transylvania now. Even in my mother's house - stay with me always. In law and honour we may not be parted; I accept no such thing and neither must you, Frank."

Frank shook his wolf head wonderingly, and thought of saying lightly that Gerard should rather worry he would be too close, or reminding him of those nights when Frank had come crawling, lonely or frightened, into Gerard's bed. He thought of the weeks when his insistence had failed to keep Gerard by his side when he was ill, when he had been kept in his room under guard to thwart his determination to travel with Gerard to the fortress of the Osadci, a vassal clan.

"It is not enough that you wish to remain with me," Gerard pressed on, for he apparently mistook Frank's silence for uncomprehension. "It is vital that you _know_ your place, and that you _know_ your rights and claim them -" he moved his white hand in short agitated slashes as he spoke, and his lips were dry and pale in the early morning cold.

Frank changed to answer him, and for an instant he really thought he would silence Gerard with a kiss. The impulse bloomed in him suddenly, as though the intention had been sleeping in his muscles and they woke now to propel him into Gerard's sphere with some unforeseen urgency. Confusion robbed him of speech a long moment and he opened and closed his mouth.

"You are far too young for this as I was, but you know and I know we would have it no other way, and it could be no other way - I am sorry the responsibility is borne in on you so soon, two summers shy of your third Great Year, Frank, but you have always proved ready as soon as I needed - "

And Frank found his tongue, then, before Gerard could say anything more to make his chest ache. "Gerard, stop it," Frank said firmly, surprising even himself with the low note of quiet certainty. "I know. We are both as ready as we can be, now."

Gerard had fallen silent without anger or very much surprise, and just looked carefully into Frank's face for traces of conviction.

Frank dared to reach out and touch his hands, cold and damp from the rain and the wood. Gerard returned the handclasp as always, curling his fingers around Frank's smaller hand and fitting his thumb in Frank's palm. "I know," he said at last.

One of the Travellers, Mihály, whose deft hand on the reins had made him Frank's and Gerard's friend through the long nighttime wagon rides, stood with his sons a stone's throw from them, close enough to acknowledge, far enough to ignore. Frank had his own doubts whether Gerard preferred him perhaps out of partiality for his name, which he shared with Gerard's beloved younger brother Michel (or Mihael, or here in Transylvania, Mihale). Frank liked Mihály's wagon for the square carven rosettes here and there on the outside, and the warm rugs made by Mihály's old mother.

"Good morrow," Frank called to him, and all of them looked up at once, Frank and Gerard and Mihály and the two dark little boys, and saw the red crest of the sun for the first time clearly delineated behind the trees, its rays long and narrow as though it had not the energy yet to illumine the whole of the clearing, and must only cast out slender blades of light.

Frank came out of the shadows at Mihály's nod and Gerard walked at his shoulder, his face tilted up to the sun and his hands in the pockets of his travel-dusty cloak.

"How many days' travel have we still before us?" asked Gerard.

At first Mihály's nod was unclear and Frank thought he had misheard the question. He was a man of few words and a soothing companion for a wolf, with his sturdy frame and deliberate movements and homey earth-and-onion smell. But Gerard was already looking up, following his gaze, and then Mihály pointed, too.

Clinging to the mountain's face like a bat, Castle Zombescu seemed hewn out of the black stone, or grown there, perhaps, like some fantastic cluster of crags and crystals, the blazing glow from its windows like the orange sheen of sunlight on water. Its towers, Frank could see in the weak morning light, were at three corners, and under two of them fell sheer cliff faces. The mountains greyed the sky behind it, their distant peaks wreathed in clouds. Gerard's face was frozen in a tensed mask of blank surprise, but his eyes were wet and full of wonder as though he stared into the sun instead of away from it.

"The Countess will feed us tonight," said Mihály, and Frank's stomach turned in anticipation or fear so he thought he would retch. He was forced to hold his breath in silence until it passed.

"It looks like a palace for birds," said Gerard; "must we circle the whole of the mountain to obtain a more welcoming approach?"

"No," Mihály smiled serenely.

"It is a twisting zig-zagged Way up the foothills and through the forest and parallel to the ridge," said one of the little boys, pointing towards the side of the mountain at the Way hidden from Frank's and Gerard's sight.

"I cannot see the Way myself," Gerard told him, "but that is why I travel with all of you."

Frank's body had been trained in the last half a fortnight to take its rest in the daytime, and he had been alert and moving all the night, so he, like many of the Travellers, slept inside a moving wagon after they packed up and moved again at midday, for they were close enough now to reach the castle by nightfall.

Excitement at first kept him awake at Gerard's side, ranging on foot at the head of the line of wagons with the chief wolves of the pack. This dust, these rocks, these small hardy plants and these wildflowers belonged to Gerard's mother the Queen, the Countess Zombescu. All this land watched over by the Castle belonged to her, ruler of a small and very old Transylvanian county and, it was whispered, one of the most deadly powerful voices on the vampire Midnight Council.

Even in wolf form, even surrounded in these scents and sights and the severely beautiful mountain vista, Gerard did not forget himself. There were no reveries, no thoughtlessly following a scent trail, and no missteps; he kept sharply alert, and when Frank's tail drooped from exhaustion and his limbs grew weak, Gerard led him to the witch's wagon and stayed there all the while Frank slept.

He woke, though, when the wagon trail turned narrow and uneven, the wheels bouncing and the wagon swaying and creaking. The Way was made of mud and loose crumbled rock as it climbed the last steep hill to the castle's smooth front face, the side which had been hidden from their sight as they gazed up from the clearing. There were no horses, no animal sounds, no liveried guardsmen flanking the wide open gate as the wagons entered the stone courtyard at sundown. Before them, the great door creaked open, and over their heads circled watchers on black wings - bats or birds, Frank could not tell.

Gerard was standing alert and proud on the step of the lead wagon; and when it stopped he leapt gracefully to the ground, changing in midair so he flowed to his feet and shook his black hair away from his white face. In his black velvet travelling cloak, the sunlight gleaming on the milky moon-pale skin, he looked almost more vampire than wolf for a long moment. Frank padded to the ground and changed too after a suitable pause, and Gerard looked at him quickly, his golden eyes full of awareness and power and, somehow, just the same as when he was wolf-shaped, and a little of Frank's tension eased at the familiarity.

Then one of the black birds fell from the sky like a stone, growing larger and larger so quickly he had hardly time to realise it before its wings covered half the courtyard in shadow it seemed, bat wings, not bird wings, the wings of a tremendous bat - and then it lit on the ground as delicately as a butterfly. Its wings folded around it and Frank was left blinking at the slender black-clad form before them, the white folds of an elaborate lace neckcloth under his white face, and then the folds of the black cloak brushing the ground.

Gerard was not left stunned even for a moment. He started forward, it seemed, before a man form had emerged from the streak of black, and Frank tensed at his side, all uncertainty. Gerard flung himself at the man - the boy, Frank realised, though he was taller than Gerard, tall and slender, white-skinned and black-haired and his eyes set in deep bruised hollows under heavy peaked brows. The vampire's face changed a little - not so much in expression as in emotion, as though a light of another colour had shined on it for a moment, as it folded Gerard in its arms, and then its face was hidden in his neck and suddenly Frank recognised him and - stopped his fearful movement after Gerard.

Stopped his movement, but did not relax.

Michel was the last person alive, Frank was sure, who would hurt Gerard, after himself.

His shoulders knotted slowly, invisibly with tension inside his fine travelling clothes.

Michel had always worshipped Gerard, loved him and clung to him and spoken to him in secret quiet whispers, though Frank thought he remembered that, before he had left Castle Wajdra, the vampire boy had known how to smile. Surely he would do nothing to harm him, vampire or not. Surely.

There was a constant rattle of sound behind them from the wagons; but the intermittent whistling of the wind in the turrets - and beyond them in the free expanse of sky - was almost louder. Frank could only hear that Gerard and Michel spoke at all because he stood barely two steps in Gerard's shadow - a soft sound he could distinguish nothing of until he realised it was French, not the songs Frank had learned nor the books he had read nor the courtly language Gerard had schooled him in but something fast and liquid and only half-said, like a pack of wolves glimpsed through the trees. Frank had spoken more French with Gerard than with their French masters and he barely recognised this musical murmur from the dim memories of his childhood, before Michel and the Queen had left.

As he spoke Gerard moved his head a little, but Michel stood motionless with his long, thin hands crossed over each other between Gerard's shoulderblades and the red lining of his cloak showing where the edges rippled back, stirring against both their legs.

He didn't lift his head until the last moment, and he met Frank's eyes only in passing, deliberately, as he looked up and stepped back to turn his attention to Gerard. His eyes were dark, cool and still, full of that same look of sneering distrust Frank remembered so well from his first year in Castle Wajdra. It burned into his memory now on reacquaintance, waking unpleasantly vivid memories of his confusion and anxiety and jealousy, Gerard's kindness and Michel's alien coldness. He had had a trick of pretending Frank was not in the room that had gone so far to make Frank feel invisible, he had actually doubted whether Michel could see him, or had noticed him.

He noticed now, that cool gaze said, acknowledgment and a hint of steel, of threat. It was hard to remember the tall young vampire in his exotic clothes, so different from the quiet little boy, had only fifteen summers to Frank's fourteen.

Michel fell back to the door to allow Gerard to pass - like a guest in his own house, the younger son and the lower-ranking nobleman, something which might rankle, thought Frank, though it never showed on his face - and Gerard took a step backward, turning his head deliberately to catch Frank's eye as though he doubted whether Frank would follow him. Frank bristled for a moment, until he realised the display was not a reminder to him, but to Michel and to whomever waited inside or circled still in the sky.

A vampire in what might have been the Queen's livery (or rather, the Zombescu colours) waited in the shadows of the great hall, a tall narrow chamber dominated by an unlit chandelier over a curving stair carpeted in aubergine and gold. The dying light of the sun spilling through the great door seemed to be the only source of light in the room, but vampire eyes were even more suited to that than werewolves' were. Michel drifted ahead of them soundlessly, down a series of turns of corridors, stone or wood-panelled, lit variously by branches of gold candelabra, oil lamps, and crude wooden torches.

At last at the bottom of two flights of stairs Michel pulled open a pair of ornately carved arched wooden doors set deeply recessed in the stone wall; the light of a torch playing over it showed scenes of Jesus on the cross and at the opening of his crypt. The room inside was a private chapel, long and narrow, the far end dominated by an elaborately carved wooden altar and two mismatched stone statues of the Virgin, stained with weather and worn with age, and lit by such a profusion of candles set on and around them that the rest of the room was illuminated as well, but cast into deep shadows. So awe-inspiring was this display that the eye lingered to absorb it a moment before moving forward to take notice of the Queen.

Her Majesty reclined on a slim and modern couch of yellow satin and gilded wood, her flawless, ageless face instantly recognisable though her dark hair was swathed in a long red linen veil. Her eyes were closed, her white limbs and neck surrounded in such a cloud of coloured silks, it was impossible to determine what sort of garments she wore. Her eyes were slow to open, and lazy, until they fixed on her son's face.

Then she sat up swiftly and half-rose to her feet. “Gerard!” she crooned, and he crossed the room in haste, nearly stumbling on a padded Ottoman stool, before falling to one knee at her feet. She leaned over and gently kissed his forehead before folding him in an embrace of black lace and satin and green and gold Chinese silk.

There was a faint aroma of dust under the cloying sourness of vampire filling the musty room, windowless and set underground as it was; it could have been intended for a crypt, before the chapel was built. Though living flame was the only source of light in the room – candles at the altar, and torches flanking the door – it crawled with knife-edged shadows and stripes of light.

The pathway down the centre of the room was nearly empty of furnishing, aside from the Ottoman stool which had nearly sent the King sprawling at the Queen's feet; but aside from this passage, no more than the width of a carriage step, the room was crowded with couches and tables, statuary small and large, wooden chests bound in leather and gold, fur and Persian rugs, the tusks of an elephant carved into freestanding pillars, and the corpses of dead animals tanned and stuffed and posed in the semblance of life. Exotic Turkish and Chinese weaponry shared space upon the walls with fraying tapestries, icons in the Russian style, and tablets of crumbling ancient carving.

Behind the Queen's couch, between a great snarling moth-eaten cat and a massive oak cabinet, stood a gilded brazier on a pearl-inlaid table, with strings of pearls and other jewels spilling out of it. The light from the candles set round the feet of the Virgin of Sorrows caught fire in the heart of a ruby that looked too heavy to wear.

Though it was French Gerard had spoken to his brother, the Queen addressed him in Romanian only, and the Transylvanian accent, when she bade him sit on the couch with her – Gerard laughed, "But Mama, I cannot possibly do such violence to your beautiful gown," and seated himself instead on a chair.

"My darling, you are so considerate," said the Queen absently, her eyes wandering the contents of the room with a look that was either remarkably vague or alarmingly effortless. "How you have changed," she murmured, while appearing lost in dreamy contemplation of a stone urn a few feet to his left which was filled, as Frank could see perfectly from his vantage at Gerard's side, with cobwebs.

"Change is inevitable," said Michel dryly. He had a voice like the rustling of heavy, expensive paper in a dark and intimate chamber.

The Queen took no notice of this remark, but lay back upon her couch with a sigh. "Not for the worse, I know, but you will forgive the regret of a mother that you are a man now and no more her cherished babe. Only an eyeblink, next to the centuries I hope you will reign. You begin already to liken your poor papa."

"I am more like him than like you, I am told," said Gerard, "but I prefer to fancy myself the equal inheritor of your virtues."

She laughed, and lifted her head, dark eyes flashing with humour. "Certainly, you have Dietrich-Wolfgang's bravery and all my beauty; but those stiff old dogs would hardly tell you so."

"I have his face, as well, I'm told," said Gerard mildly, but he flushed faintly with embarrassment. In the candle glow the rush of pink in his cheeks brought to mind the flickering warmth of firelight.

"His nose," she agreed.

"And jaw," said Michel.

Frank thought, watching the Queen's beautiful young face, that she was both fearsome and fragile, very much like Gerard indefinably, and perhaps the bravest person he had ever met, to have followed her husband, and carried her child, into the heart of werewolf country, and stayed in Castle Wajdra as long as she had, and then to have left Gerard behind there when she had gone.

"You will make the most beautiful clan king Romania has seen these three centuries, despite the similarity," her Majesty pursued, with a secretive smile, and Gerard looked away from her, half laughing.

Frank looked in wonder at Michel on the Queen's other side standing still as a tree next to a marble bust on a stone sarcophagus; his face was equally still, but he smiled without moving his lips.

"My ancestors' blood will flow into your clan after all, Gerard," she murmured. "How rare and peculiar that so many years after my blood ceased to flow I should have living descendants."

"I am young yet, Mother!" Gerard protested. "If I live to see my twenty-fifth summer it will be early yet."

"You will see many more summers than your father did," said the Queen, and her voice chilled Frank, but when he looked irresistably at her he understood he was obeying a command as powerful as Gerard's, but silent: her look was not cold, nor yet unfocused and dreamy, but warm and full of recognition. "And this is your most faithful and loving friend grown almost as old as you are. Frank, little one, come here."

Astonished as he was, Frank knew better than to disobey the Queen; he glanced only to Gerard for his nod of permission and went forward, his heart pounding a little harder than it ought to from anxiety, and knelt on the dusty stone before the shining hem of her robe. He was halfway ready, but still surprised, when she bent and caught him in her smooth vampire-scented embrace; and before Frank recognised the smell, the familiarity of it sent tears to his eyes, and awakened hazy memories of gentle hugs from her in the days before she had left Castle Wajdra.

There had always been layers and layers to the Queen's dress, underdresses and parted overdresses and dressing coats and robes, stoles and cloaks; and there had always been smudges of dirt or dust somewhere on her fine skirts by midday, for she was quick to sit or kneel, to touch, and some of the werewolves complained that she left the scent of vampire everywhere she touched, but some said that at least she was not afraid of stone and fur and wood and leather and earth.

"You are not so very much younger than Michel, are you, Frank?"

"I will have fourteen summers this year, your Majesty."

She smiled and kissed the top of his head, and wrinkled her nose. "You have slept in a Traveller's caravan today; I smell hungry children on you, and travel and spice. We will serve a dinner in the banquet hall once it is full dark without; you will please see that my son reaches it safely and in good time, and in the meantime you will wish to do what wolves do to remove the scents of travel from themselves. Michel – no, stay, Silvestru will show them."

Michel's mouth tightened unhappily, but he gave no argument, and it was the silent vampire servant, waiting outside the door of the Queen's boudoir, who showed them up three flights of stairs and into the South-facing tower, where wide windows admitted the weak dying rays of sunset and the first pale dusting of moonlight.

Silvestru bowed at the entrance to the lower tower room and said briefly, "Milady has given over the whole of the South tower to your Majesty's use," and melted away into the shadows, probably quite literally, for everyone knew that vampires could become invisible and near intangible by transforming into mist.

The lowest room of the tower was no more impressive than the stone-flagged courtyard and the narrow, unlit chamber of the grand entry hall; the stone was dark and rough-hewn and the floor strewn with fur rugs, the fireplace made of heavy beams and tremendous smooth stones. But the stairs gave to them a larger chamber where the tower flared to its fullest width, the walls panelled in wood and hung with velvet, the floor laid in an intricate pattern of tiny squares of grey and black stone, and here was half the tower made into a large and comfortable half-circular receiving chamber with an ornate fireplace, an iron grate decorated with a rampant lion, and a broad hearth. Through an arched doorway stood a tall wardrobe and a low chest, a couch, a massive carven chair and a writing desk.

The stairs were decorated with a wooden banister on this level which became still more ornate in the royal bedroom above it, which was dominated by a single bed more massive even than Gerard's bed in the royal bedchamber in Castle Wajdra. It was not so wide nor so long, but stood higher from the floor on a cabinet of wood rising at all four corners into posts thicker than Frank's thighs; thick draperies hung from the ceiling between the posts, brocade on the outside and blood-red silk within.

There was no stone archway here but a wooden-panelled wall leading through a small and neatly-hidden door to a smaller bedchamber furnished with a tall wooden bed of otherwise normal proportions, a table, and a handsome wooden seachest; the fur rugs on the floor overlapped each other and the walls were hung with more of the velvet from the other bedchamber.

They discovered a room at the top of the tower which was very low at the edges but high in the centre. Moonlight leaked through the small window under the eaves and cast a dim silver square on the floor, polished and bare. A narrow couch and a low table at its arm were all the furnishing this room had to offer, but the shallow pool of moon on the floor was inviting, and there was something cosy about the cramped edges of the room and the roof hanging low over the couch while shadows clustered like old cobwebs in the peak. It was instantly Frank's favourite chamber. He knelt for a better view through the window, and craned his neck to catch sight of the moon riding high above the tree-clad peak of a neighbouring mountain.

He felt Gerard behind him without hearing his footsteps, just a hand on his shoulder. "Is it full dark yet?"

"No, not yet," said Frank, and then glanced over his shoulder when he added a teasing, " - your Majesty."

Gerard growled a little in reply and tightened his hand on the back of Frank's neck, an easy affectionate gesture which he certainly did not intend to raise goosebumps down the length of Frank's spine. "If you are impatient to hear a vampire address me without respect I think you need hardly wait long," he added.

"Not precisely impatient," Frank admitted, "for you have told me not to fight unnecessarily with vampires and I am sure I do not wish to embarrass you by needing to be rescued from them through my own hotheadedness or anything less than a true threat to your safety."

"I told you so expecting you would find it rather difficult," said Gerard, folding his legs up and sitting at Frank's side. He leaned over until his head rested on Frank's shoulder and he, too, could see through the window. "There's the moon. At any rate, vampires are easy to provoke to anger, but not so easily provoked to a fight unless they can be certain of emerging uninjured."

"And if anything they can be assured of the reverse, even should I prove easy to kill," said Frank.

"Indeed," said Gerard, with a little yawn. "For you are quite formidable when angry."

***

Werewolves love the night because the moon is the night's Queen, and casts her net of magic over all the sky, filling it with power, calling her children to worship, quickening their blood, whispering the secrets of the stars and the rhythm of the tides. Night is a wonderland for the wolf, woven of a thousand shades of black, a thousand scent stories, a thousand thousand sounds; and moonlight is an elixir of strength, of speed, of clarity, a balm to the spirit and the flesh. A werewolf in the moonlight is near invulnerable.

Vampires love the night because they hate the sun. The towers of Castle Zombescu were grand and empty, the most gracious windowed chambers draped in curtains, the relics of an age when breathing folk had walked the halls still standing in many chambers, stained with time (or blood), the nesting places of half-tame rats and bats. The Queen's sleeping chamber (though she was a Countess, here, and the Countess Zombescu was in Transylvania far more powerful than the Wajdra's Queen) and boudoir, and Michel's, and the crypts and black windowless chambers which served as drawing rooms and audience halls, lay all deep in the mountain, under the castle, where no gleam of daylight might reach.

When the sun breathed his first gasp of dawn over the horizon, misting the dome of the night sky with pearl-grey and gold, the great doors creaked shut, the wolf and human servants of the castle vanished as though they had never been, the curtains were drawn, and the vampires retired below ground to feast, to read and write their letters, to worship, to make music, to seal themselves in their stone sarcophagi and sleep. At sundown they emerged again, and the mountain came to life.

Had Gerard chosen to sleep all the day and rise at sundown with the tolling of the dinner gong, and the arrivals of the first vampire guests by horse, or in wolf form, or as birds and bats who flew through the windows, the castle might have seemed less strange to Frank; for despite whole hallways full of ancient shut-up chambers, the castle was lively at night, lively as a lived-in castle ought to be.

But keeping to the strict vampiric regimen might have been hard for Gerard, who frequently stayed up two or nearly three days at a time if he only forgot himself in some urgent or interesting task, even had he not loved the sun.

It was not that Frank was frightened of the castle, for an empty room at high noon was surely the safest place in a country filled with vampires who might wish to attack the Countess's half-breed son and the werewolf servant he had brought with him to vampire country. It was powerfully strange, though, a great castle where polished silver and gold, fine carvings and art from distant lands stood on furniture dull with age and lack of care, where the wind kicked last fall's leaves, brown and crumpled like empty parchment fists, round hallways empty of living smells and voices.

In the daylight hours they might have been the only two people on that whole desolate mountain, though rats and foxes, birds and deer and wild cats roamed in the courtyard, sometimes into the castle itself. As the fortnights trickled away Frank learned to love the long morning hours, the castle open and silent but for the sound of their voices; it had often seemed to him, when he was a child, that parts of Castle Wajdra were abandoned, and he had explored every corner, and brought them out proudly to show Gerard, one at a time, like his treasures stored up and doled out.

Now they explored the vampire castle together, and Frank thought with the cynicism of age on his childish conceits, bringing his lord memories wrapped only in his own innocent excitement, making the King a gift of his own land, all those secrets of a Castle that was more Gerard's than his, after all. Still he caught himself searching for secrets to offer Gerard's notice – a family of white mice nesting in a horse-hair stuffed couch, the corpse of a raven lying in peaceful attitude in an empty corner half hidden in shadow, not a mark on its body but dry as dust, perfectly preserved and so long dead it had no scent.

They stood high on the turreted wall one morning, where Gerard had carried black coffee in a cup of China so fine the morning light shone through it, and Frank had carried a rug from the bed in his room, for it was high spring and wildflowers carpeted the ground below the castle walls, but the air was sharp with a damp breeze that crept under his collar, and he had promised not to turn wolf until Gerard had had his fill of drawing in the southeastern morning light, which he claimed was especially fine.

"Surely you are not cold still," said Gerard, and put his coffee down on a stone worn hollow by the treads of thousands of human footsteps when the fortress had been guarded day and night against barbarian hordes.

The sun heated his face and the top of his head, but where his fingers lay on his knee they were still chilled by the wind. "Have you finished one, then, and desire another pose? May I see it?"

The drawing showed a broad vista of mountaintops like jagged teeth biting into the sky, the shadows of clouds and the silhouette of a single eagle; and at the very bottom of the sheet, a small figure at the stone wall, not huddled in a shapeless bundle against the cold but dressed with all the dignity and grandeur of a vampire in its bat-wing cloak. The profile was sharply lined in ink and Frank recognised it from many other drawings, though it was so small a single line signified his eye. The tiny figure looked noble, and filled with hope, as though it would leap into the sky after the silhouette of that eagle.

"You have made my rug into a cloak fit for a King," was all Frank said, and Gerard accepted the remark and turned his book around again, and lifted his pen. But as the sun rose higher and Frank struggled against sleepiness he said instead, "You have not kept a record of our journey in that book."

Gerard smiled and his pen moved. "I have a record of the Transylvanian mountains in my very hand."

"You have drawn nothing but people since our journey began." Children and Frank, Travellers and Frank again, Frank in wolf form, Frank sleeping. "Prince Michel -"

Gerard was silent, and Frank fell silent too. He slept eventually, and Gerard touched his shoulder to wake him to go inside.

It was that night the three vampire women came into the banquet hall while they shared goblets of red wine and pig's blood. The vampire servant at the door left for some impenetrable reason when they entered; and Michel drained his glass of wine in one gulp and moved without so much as a glance at them out of their path. The smallest of them, dressed in a black robe over a silk and lace noblewoman's nightdress, leaned on the back of his chair pouting, and looking after him with her dead eyes, her mouth stained with blood. He stood uncaring at the wall, his face unreadable, and flicked a glance at his mother.

"Catrinel!" said her Majesty reprovingly, and then looked at the other two, one flame-haired and tall, the other plump as a petted dog. Her expression softened while the tall beauty licked fur and blood from her pointed fingernails and the plump one made a short curtsey. "What is it, my pets?" Three drugged giggles, and Catrinel whispered in her Majesty's ear. No expression changed on the Queen's face, but she rose gracefully to her feet and followed the three from the room without a word.

"My mother's ladies in waiting," said Michel when he regained his seat, the first sign he had given, past that cold threatening look on the first day, that he was aware of Frank's presence in the room. Not _our_ mother but _my_ mother, unless he had forgotten through years of absence that she was Gerard's mother as well.

"It's a rare Queen who dresses herself for three weeks without ladies in waiting," said Gerard.

Michel arched a black brow arctically and said low and flat, "It's a rare lady in waiting who's stolen from her father's house through the window and starved in a hole in the ground until she willingly drinks the blood of her abductor, tortured to death and brought to life again and set free in the forest naked like a wild animal to clothe herself in the skins of beasts she won't remember killing."

Silence reigned at the table for long moments. "I never knew Mother's penchant for charity," said Gerard, and he looked up and caught Michel's eye again; they were smiling at each other in total sympathy and Frank still lost in horror, and wondering which of the horrible women he spoke of.

"Likely you have observed it and forgotten," said Michel gently, "for the impulses take her strong, yet they come rarely and far between, like poor Mitu's moments of sanity."

"Was the rogue caught on Zombescu land?" wondered Gerard.

Michel poured two more goblets of wine and one of pig's blood, and pushed the first two toward them. "Far from it," he murmured, and added, "but the girl was, on our very doorstep. The bastard ran aground in Crete – but Mother tore him apart with her own lily-white hands, or so I am given to suspect."

"Where is your castle?" said Gerard suddenly. "Or do you do the work of a lady in waiting in all their unscheduled absences?"

"Not quite all," said Michel. "And does your dog do the work of lady in waiting for you?"

Frank stiffened, but Gerard only grinned at him, "Far better; he rules me with the hand of a nursemaid at bedtime and charms me with the sweetness of a pup in the morning, and guards my back like a brother at every moment."

Frank was tense as a bowstring, torn between hurt and anger, for himself or Gerard he did not know. Michel breathed out slowly behind his goblet and at last set it down with a grim smile. "For that at least I own I am more than grateful, though if he should fail I would be first to claim his life myself."

Gerard's hand was already on Frank's arm, but nothing could stop Frank lunging to his feet and pressing himself between Gerard and the table, shielding him from Michel's sight with his own body. "You are welcome to it, for if he should die before my last drop of blood is spent, it will fall soon after."

He was shaking and would not have moved aside for gentleness; when Gerard at last called him back it was with a quiet "Thank you" filled with command.

At last it was Michel who broke the silence, though he had been drinking blood from his goblet with unconcern while Frank struggled to master himself and Gerard watched him sidelong, elaborately casual. "One might doubt your nursemaid's capability but I see it would be folly to doubt his dedication."

"It would be folly to doubt him in any respect," said Gerard sharply. He paused. "But that error must be forgiven in one who does not know him."

Michel's stillness receded enough to make way for that queer smile, his mouth unmoving. "One might almost say I do not know my brother either."

Gerard leaned forward quickly and touched his hand. Though he spoke French, Frank understood him this time, listening carefully: "I do not believe so and hope you do not either. We are brothers and we know each the other's heart."

Michel bent his head down so low Frank could not see any part of his face, nor hear his answer, but Gerard squeezed his hand tightly and said in Romanian again, "I must see your castle that I may draw a portrait of it for you as I promised long ago."

It seemed the laughter was startled from Michel, light and high-pitched and not at all like his voice. His face transformed with laughter and nudged faintly at Frank's memory with an echo of the little boy he had once wished to befriend for his own sake, not only because he was Gerard's brother. "I believe it was Castle Zombescu we thought you should draw for me then."

"Very well, it shall be both."

***

Gerard's eighteenth year came to a warm and tranquil end just before Spring opened her arms and spread the valley below Castle Zombescu with a carpet of coloured blossoms. Frank would have given him anything in his power to give on any other day (except, perhaps, the last morsel in a particularly fine dish), and had consequently little to offer him, but he had brought a wooden toy carved, on their journey, by the blind grandfather of the caravan. The wood had come from a particularly knotty piece of a rather fine fallen branch Frank had given to the old man, and asked the gnarled, bent knuckle of the branch for himself in return; the tree's own darkened knuckle remained, forming the knee and spine of a tiny figure with human limbs and wolf head, curled up and sleeping, its arms and legs knotted protectively around itself. A narrow strip of the tree's rough grey bark made fur along the wolf-man's back, but its arms and belly were of naked pale wood.

"I did not tell him what to make of it," explained Frank anxiously in half-apology as he watched Gerard turn the little shape over and over in his hand; it was little larger than the woody shell of a walnut, and nearly as round, so it vanished entirely when he closed his hand tightly around it at last.

He looked up at Frank suddenly, so close Frank could count each lash on his eyelid, and smiled, broad and tentative. "It looks like you," he said, and put it carefully in his pocket before putting one arm around Frank and laying his head deliberately down on Frank's shoulder (which made his back bend strangely and was hardly comfortable for Gerard when they both stood, and this was why he stepped away quickly, of course, and Frank let his arms drop to his sides and tucked his hands behind his back. Gerard thanked him again that night after his mother toasted his birth with a bottle of old brandy, and that was all he said of it, but when he took Gerard's coat from him at night or carried it after him up the stairs to his bedchamber, he often discovered the little carving in its pockets).

Once spring had begun giving way to summer and the nights had lost the worst of their cold chill, Michel took them after sundown one night to Castle Zaharia, down the sloping meadow and through the wood.

Gerard made a drawing of Castle Zombescu from the peak of Castle Zaharia, and covered the paper in so much ink it overflowed on his hands and left splash marks on the writing desk. They were just close enough so that Castle Zombescu was visible, if you knew where to look, in its nest of trees, clinging to the side of Mount Zombescu; Zaharia must surely have been visible from Castle Zombescu, from the proper window, as well, but it was a small fortified keep and blended well into the hills like just another craggy crest of stone thrusting like a bone through the flesh of the earth.

The drawing was a cloud of crossed and re-crossed lines, the stark white of paper showing where moonlight caught the castle's peaks. "It is wonderful, but so small I hardly dare bid a craftsman make a frame for it," said Michel doubtfully.

"Thrust it in a drawer somewhere, or under your sarcophagus," said Gerard; "that is what Frank does." Frank bit his lip and leaned forward to rescue the sleeve of Gerard's coat from a particularly large ink puddle; he had never thrust a drawing of Gerard's into a drawer, though he kept some of them in his writing desk, laid carefully to rest between blank leaves to keep the backs clean, closed tight to keep dust and moths away.

Gerard knew nothing of the portraits Frank had squirrelled away for years in the chest in his quarters, all taken from among the discarded leaves he flung to the floor and forgot about. Some of Frank's favourite drawings were the half-finished drawings of himself Gerard could not finish; it was as if, once he captured the burning light in his eye, something in the face he outlined in black and white frightened him and he cast it away from him to draw a mouse, or a rusty boot buckle, or a weary horse.

"Perhaps the drawing of Castle Zaharia will be larger," said Michel, crossing his arms casually over his snowy shirtfront and black satin waistcoat.

"Certainly, if I am provided with a large enough sheet of paper."

"I have every confidence that Mama can discover something." Or, Frank thought, send her ladies in waiting after it, and have them return three weeks hence with a rosary, a fresh-killed hare, a new dress and perhaps, even, some paper.

The moon was still high and dawn hours off when they took wolf form and padded into the forest; Frank filled his lungs with night air again and again, and tilted his face up to catch the moonlight and feel the breeze blowing through his fur like a cool, tender caress. He could have thrown himself in the damp carpet of moss and grasses and rolled about like a pup, so pleased was he to be back in the wood on four feet, for it had been one full lunar cycle since he was last wolf-shaped and out on the land at night: in the company of vampires they usually wore human form.

Michel took wolf shape too, and became one of those vampiric not-wolves, a creature with the right shape but none of the right smells, a creature which didn't act like a wolf, which spoke with human words in a voice as clear as a bell ringing in your mind.

But the joy of the wood and the chase and the smell and feel and sound of Gerard at his side – Frank revelled in it, and as they loped in his steps between the trees, leapt a mountain stream, rolled through a shallow ravine and scrambled up a bank in a shower of pebbles, he almost forgot his resentment of Michel completely.

At dawn they were at the bottom of the steep slope to the Zombescu gates, and Michel bid them farewell and folded into a bat and took to the sky. Gerard stood motionless there and watched the little black shape fade into the dim pre-dawn haze, and finally sank down on his haunches there where they stood. Frank bent to nudge his foreleg in worry, but Gerard just shook his head and caught his eye with a reassuring wolfish grin. He was all right, and not overtired, only resting in thought.

Frank dropped to the grass at his side and felt the cool dew on his belly; the heat of exertion seemed to rise from him into the air gradually as light spread across the sky, and at full dawn he was cool, almost chilled. He scratched with his paw at the thick mat of wildflowers, releasing the pungent odour of their green sap, cool and sweetly crystallised by the dawn. He rubbed his face in the grass, and finally flopped over on his back and closed his eyes in bliss.

The cool nose on his face and neck was a surprise, then, and his eyes shot open, his spine twisting instinctively; but it was too late, his happy lassitude had given Gerard an advantage and he made use of it ruthlessly to pin Frank to the ground in a few quick moves. Frank squirmed against his hold, but he was too contented to be churlish about a fair wrestling victory, and relaxed at once when he felt the play-bite on his neck. He sighed his surrender with cheerful good grace, but Gerard nuzzled his neck apologetically anyway.

It was like warm fingertips dragging up his spine, or breath on his ear, lying in Gerard's embrace in human form, or any one of a hundred thoughtless touches Gerard bestowed on him innocently – warm and comfortable, and so painfully sweet he could cry, like the first mouthful of strong, warm mead.

His wolf shape had been Frank's refuge; it had been least touched by his maudlin adolescent obsessions over Gerard. The wolf-mind was simpler, somehow: the world seemed direct, complex but never entirely bewildering; to wolf-Frank Gerard was a fact of life like the moon, or an unchanging star, the pure and self-evident centre of the universe and beginning and end of wolf- and human thoughts.

His body did not betray him so readily, at least, but still Frank felt himself shudder, just once, with helpless contentment in Gerard's embrace, and he held himself very still with a great effort of will, not bowing to the powerful instinct to move, to offer up his throat, to rub his face in the silky fur at Gerard's shoulder.

Gerard didn't react to the shiver, and perhaps he had not felt it after all. He released Frank and rolled to his feet, and they walked up the lawn to the castle together.

The sound of carriage wheels reached their ears, and the scent of dust, long before they changed to human form and entered the courtyard. Frank had expected Travellers, perhaps, and certainly not a closed and curtained state carriage. A human servant stood by the open door and another at the reins, and as Frank watched open-mouthed the front door swung wide and -

\- the Queen walked out of it; her form was unmistakeable, though she was dressed in tall boots and the simple garb of a poor Traveller woman under the satin-lined black cloak which no vampire would be seen without. She was heavily veiled and her head entirely covered, and she walked under a silk parasol held by a human servant, but she stood in the daylight and climbed into the carriage with the same inimitable regal carriage she always bore. The black velvet curtains twitched in the window, and Gerard and Frank swept deep bows and moved aside to let it pass out the gate.

Frank found himself staring open-mouthed after the carriage. Michel was surely sealed in his crypt below the castle; for a young vampire such as he, daylight might well kill him, even veiled or shaded by a parasol. It was safe for werewolves to move in daylight precisely because for most vampires it was literally impossible to do the same, though at night they could turn to smoke or any animal imaginable, which was quite an advantage in battle.

"She's one of the Old Ones," he whispered at last. Any werewolf would know what it meant; but he had hardly expected -

"I have never discovered precisely," said Gerard calmly, "the year in which my mother breathed her first, or her last, but I am certain she was at least past her second century when I was born."

The banquet table was almost empty that night, for the Queen had still not returned and they had received none of her usual guests; Gerard and Michel and Frank held their usual three seats near the head of the table, and ate in a peaceful near-silence. Frank, at least, was still tired from his night of running, though he had since slept much of the day. Gerard speculated out loud on possible perspectives from which to get a good vantage of Castle Zaharia, the value of daytime versus nighttime views, and what his mother was doing.

"She must be on a bloody mission," he mused.

"No more so than usual," murmured Michel, with a quirk of his mouth which made Frank chuckle unexpectedly into his slow-roasted venison stew.

"Surely it's only an emergency of some kind that would make her consider it?" said Gerard.

Michel was unconcerned, however. "She will be paying a call upon an enemy who does not share her tolerance for daylight and will be unable to escape whatever violence or retribution she has planned."

"A true werewolf tactic," said Frank, who cringed at once lest Michel should refuse to acknowledge he had spoken, but both of them laughed.

"That it is indeed," said Gerard, reaching over to rest his hand on the arm of Frank's chair and Frank, flushed from having just drained a goblet of wine, leaned closer to smell Gerard's werewolf's breath and the rich earthy scents of wolf and wine – an intoxicating draught for his nose after the dry sourness of vampire everywhere.

"A tactic invented by vampires themselves, I assure you," said Michel, "when you wolves had not yet emerged from the forests or rent limb-from-limb your first human peasant."

Vampires did not take personally such attacks; their attitude to warfare was pragmatic and barred no measures at all. Their sense of honour was rigid but peculiar to the uninitiated; Frank had read crumbling accounts of it in archaic Hungarian that made his head ache.

The Queen's vicious vengeance on the trespasses of one of her own, a lesser vampire, against a human, was the merest justice by vampire law, for the vampires on her lands were hers to control, and their trespasses against other lords – human or vampiric – a stain on her own honour. By falling on Zombescu land that helpless peasant girl had earned her Majesty's justice. No vampire in the world would have stood between her and her prey.

"I suppose the object of Mother's little social visit will be one of the intended guests at the Midsummer feast?"

"It is extremely unlikely that she would permit even another member of the Council entrance to the castle if they were known to be highly hostile to your presence at the meeting," Michel agreed. "There are certain personages whose adherence to the old beliefs create an undesirable rigidity of mind in, er, all matters lupine; but the standing of the house of Zombescu, and Mother's own standing with many of the Old Ones, are such that that rigidity has been fading markedly in recent years. They say an Easterly wind is blowing in Transylvania."

"Surely the Old Ones who distrust werewolves must outnumber those who are prepared to face the prospect of alliance; you cannot persuade me that the County of Zombescu, or indeed Mother's own history, have _so_ much power."

Michel's face changed slightly and he moved his hands as he thought about this. "Embrace the prospect, no, but you would perhaps be surprised by the Old Ones," he murmured at last. "They can be difficult to anticipate, and have not survived through stupidity and inflexibility. You will find every language in the world spoken in the chamber of the Midnight Council."

"That I had anticipated," said Gerard.

Frank had been considering the Queen's errand, though, and he understood the queer tension at the table tonight to spring from the real danger she stepped into. She was a formidable force, but the Old Ones, as Michel reminded them, could be very hard to anticipate. "But surely it would be frowned upon that she and her allies seek their opponents in advance of the Council to eliminate them?"

Michel opened his eyes very wide. "Why?"

Frank frowned. "She moves now because it is considered folly to invite an enemy into your stronghold, for only a foolish enemy would miss a chance to act against her to his advantage; yet where the Midnight Council convenes are all its members invited."

"Of course, but there is no expectation that they all must _come_." Michel's lip curled a little, Frank thought, but he answered readily enough. "The Council would be far smaller if all its battles were waged when it convened, instead of through treachery and back-stabbing in the months before."

"'The dead opponent offers the least opposition,'" said Frank in old Hungarian. He had found a certain amusing poetry in the line.

"One might say a dead opponent becomes a friend," said Michel. "He is sure to stay away, and it may be that his friends choose to join him."

"Though it is not because no enemies of werewolves will be present that we expect our Midsummer to pass without blood spilled," said Gerard.

"It would be outlandishly strange if any blood should be _spilled_ ," said Michel thoughtfully. "Vampires are rarely so careless."

"And we expect no dismemberment or injury either," Gerard continued, with a grin, "because Mother's enemies and her friends as well fear her. They will wish to act, but few would dare."

Frank knew. He had been thinking of little else: the Midsummer banquet and its increasing dangers loomed over their quiet, solitary days and strange, festive nights like a shadow.

The politics of the situation were well-known to all, for they were the same in Transylvania as in neighbouring Wajdra lands, in all Romania and their part of the world. Their numbers were dwindling; humans were multiplying and pushing further and further into their ancestral lands, and becoming more warlike too when for hundreds of years they had been living peacefully intermingled with vampire and werewolf, under vampire and werewolf overlords. The old enmity of werewolf and vampire, the two creatures of the night, was many-layered and stewed in obscure tradition, superstition, and mystery; immortal vampires and the long-lived werewolves had lived in the mists of time in the same woods and mountains and their ancestral connections remained in their friends and servants, the wolves and the Travellers, though those times were preserved in the mind of no living werewolf. Perhaps there were Old Ones, still, who held the secrets of the past.

If they did it might be well to unearth them, for if they continued to retreat and dwindle they must eventually find themselves separately hunted to extinction or scattered to obscurity; if they retreated to the Transylvanian mountains and then turned on each other, as seemed entirely possible, then their fate was sealed. It was time to find some means to control the warring between vampire and werewolf so that they could turn their attention outward lest they suffer mighty consequences.

The atmosphere was lighter thereafter, though Frank was still subdued and lost in sober thought, watching silently Gerard and Michel discussing the history of Castle Zombescu and their childhoods and Gerard's drawings; at least, he struggled to remain subdued.

It was hardly just or reasonable to be jealous of Michel when Gerard was so happy to innocently relive his childhood, to offer Michel more drawings like the sketches they talked of, drawings of their house in France and Castle Zombescu and Castle Wajdra.

"I would be pleased to draw you again should you have any wish to sit for me," Gerard said late, when the hour neared dawn, and so much laughter had filled the banquet hall that even Frank had relaxed back in his tremendous chair.

But at this Michel and Frank both looked up – Frank with a jerk that made his face heat, and he dropped his gaze quickly to the white hand clenching on his thigh and struggled with the white rage of jealousy. Gerard's drawings were something so private he rarely drew while strangers watched; though all the clan knew the King for an artist, he chose carefully what to show any but his intimates, and he trusted no one but Frank – and that was Frank's downfall, of course, for Gerard trusted Michel.

Yes, Frank told himself viciously, he trusted and loved his brother. Frank had best not waste jealousy on that.

But it was a sick feeling, that his value to Gerard was suddenly less, as if his art had been a precious secret between them which Gerard offered to Michel thoughtlessly.

His heart felt like a snake in his chest, his belly heavy and unpleasant, and he was so guilty he almost felt sorry for Michel, who he knew was jealous of him as well, and in all fairness had more right to be, for he was the little brother who had loved Gerard already when Frank had come to Castle Wajdra (though he had left Gerard, whispered Frank's snake heart, left him alone and Frank had loved him and taken care of him all these years -).

It was Gerard who called Frank his brother; he hoped to soothe Michel, thinking in his loyalty he would recognise Frank's loyalty to his brother as a favour done him, in taking his job in his absence. Gerard did not see how Michel's eyes darkened with hurt.

He didn't know, either, s the moon. At any rate, vampires are easy to provoke to anger, but not so easily provoked to a fight unless they can be certain of emerging uninjured.that Frank wishepd less than anything to be his brother. Frank's devotion was not brotherly in the _least_.

Michel would like to sit for Gerard, he said, cautiously. He followed them to the tower receiving room and lowered himself into the largest chair in the room, and Frank soon saw the reason for the reluctance: for all he seemed so still normally, his impatience made him a poor model. He twitched occasionally and spoke in the long silence while Gerard was absorbed in his charcoal and paper, and Frank watched over his shoulder as the quick spiky form took shape like a rough-hewn crystal glinting through a veil of charcoal smeared over the paper.

The fire flickered and the silence was peaceful, but not exactly comfortable. Michel's presence constrained Frank with a certain amount of dignity. Though he touched Gerard without hesitation, he would not allow himself to curl on the floor and drowse with his head on Gerard's legs as he wished.

When the portrait was finished Michel smiled with real pleasure, and though it wasn't intended for Frank he felt himself soften towards him and his jealousy and guilt twinged. "It's the best you've ever drawn for me," he said, and let Gerard hug him.

"But I fear it is not the best I've drawn for you," Gerard said after a moment.

Michel examined the portrait by the light of the fire; somehow no charcoal had smeared on his fingers, though Frank had it on his hands and had not even touched the picture. He sat silently at Gerard's side on the low couch, and Gerard rested his hand easily on Frank's arm through his sleeve.

"It must be a little better than my childhood efforts but it is only a quick sketch," Gerard explained, "the merest trifle; and I have brought better for you."

Gerard had packed his charcoals and ink, his books and papers, all himself. Frank felt that snake twisting in his chest, and instead of sick now he thought he might feel merely miserable, and exhausted.

He had not known Gerard had drawn anything for Michel, but he had witnessed each drawing, and now he must pore over his hoard of memories, examining each quiet moment of Gerard drawing and Frank waiting, or watching, or dozing, or studying him. For each he must wonder – this one, or this one, or this one – was he drawing it for Michel all the while? Absent in his mind, though Frank did not know it?

"Here," said Gerard. "I have them here." He squeezed Frank's forearm while Michel wasn't looking, and surged to his feet in excitement then, pushing nervous hands through his disordered hair.

Michel looked up and raised an eyebrow, but when he saw Gerard move toward the staircase his face lightened in understanding and anticipation.

"Come, please, both of you," he said, and was on the stairs before Frank could move after him. Michel lingered to set the picture carefully aside on an inlaid table, and Frank moved hesitantly towards the stairs and looked up to see Gerard reach the bedchamber above, where servants had laid a fire against the chill mountain night.

Michel looked up and met Frank's gaze then. Frank blinked, and he had melted across the room, soundless and invisible, and stood between Frank and the stairs, impossibly close. His face and mouth were immobile, but Frank could feel him smiling, again, his eyes warm, and he took a startled step backward. Michel raised an eyebrow, not releasing his gaze, and Frank chuckled a little, ruefully, and relaxed.

"He drew already when we were children," Michel told Frank, calmly. "When I was a baby and he was five or six years old – even before I can remember. He drew pictures for me sometimes, but most of them he kept for himself. He only let me look at them," he smiled wryly. "After I asked him for one once, he drew them for me almost every day. I had not thought that I could, you see."

Frank nodded, because he did see. Michel had shared a little piece of Gerard, for whatever mysterious vampiric motivation he might have; it had been a piece of generosity, for they were each jealous of the other, and most jealous of Gerard's secrets. Frank worried whether Michel would wish him to share some other piece of Gerard in return, and he frowned.

But Michel shook his head no, and said, "I would never hurt him, you know."

"I knew," Frank murmured, but he realised guiltily that he had perhaps not entirely known. That anxiety was easing, now. He nodded solemnly.

"Thank you," said Michel then, with a deep look from his dark eyes, and turned away.

Frank blinked, slowly, and followed him up the stairs to the bedchamber, where Gerard had spread open one of his thin drawing books and pulled loose drawings from between the leaves. These lay upon the bed and the chest at its foot, and when he moved into the room Frank saw that many of them were pictures he had seen before, and some quite old; the drawings Gerard had made for Mikey were of trees and castles, horses, the village near Castle Wajdra, a Midwinter bonfire, a wolf with glowing eyes, a fox and her cubs.

None of them were people. There were no drawings of the interior of the royal suite, though he had drawn many of his favourite places. None of them were Frank's places, though; none of Frank's most precious memories lay here for Michel's eyes. When Frank looked up at Gerard anxiously, Gerard tilted his head quizzically and smiled at him, warm and understanding. Frank felt himself flush from his face to his toes and turned his face away, once he could bring himself to look down.

He retreated then to the fireplace in confusion, and stood absorbing its warmth to counter the chill breeze through the open window. Gerard and Michel's voices faded to a murmur, and Frank, who had really slept very little for several days, felt his exhaustion catch up with him suddenly as it sometimes did, like an unexpected crevice in the ground catching his paw and throwing him to the earth with the breath knocked from him.

The room hazed with sleep, but Frank let it, for he knew they were as safe as they might be – safer with Michel there, if any vampires should come. His thoughts wandered through Castle Wajdra and Castle Zombescu and a vast empty castle filled with royal chambers where the beds were flanked with weeping statues and filled with candles and Frank could find nowhere at all to sleep but the floor, while rats whispered behind the wooden panelling and a dead raven pecked at his face.

There was a crash, then, and the taste of water. He could not open his eyes. He could not lick his lips. He must be drowning on the floor, and the dry raven was whispering in his ear that he must not fight it, that it would not hurt, that he could wake soon. Its voice choked off, crumbling into dust, and there was nothing left of the raven; with a surge of panic Frank flung himself into the waking world. He would leap up. He would cast aside the bedclothes -

He opened his eyes. He was as weak as a kitten.

"Oh," Gerard breathed, and then paused with his mouth open, his brow creased in worry. "Frank?" he said.

"Gerard?" Frank croaked. His throat felt as dry as the raven's, but his lips were wet.

He lay beneath a heap of bedclothes in the servant's chamber next to Gerard's bedchamber, in his own bed. It was full night, for he could feel the moon high outside like an itch under his skin. Frank took a deep breath. Had he slept all the daylight hours away?

"Frank," said Gerard, with a shaky sigh. "You must not frighten me so." His voice was still uneven; he was on the edge of the bed, leaning over Frank. "By the sun and the moon, when you would not wake – I feared - " he stopped speaking as if he was cutting the words off in his mouth by a supreme effort of will.

"What happened?" said Frank. "I would not wake?"

Gerard laughed and collapsed on top of him, heavy and solid, worming his arm under the covers and around Frank's shoulder. "You do not remember at all." His voice was muffled by the bedclothes, his oily hair lying in Frank's face, thick with the familiar powerful wolf smell of him that touched Frank somewhere at his centre with recognition, deep inside, beneath the skin.

"I was dreaming," Frank murmured. "A castle – not this castle – a castle empty of people. I was trying to sleep. There was no one there but the raven."

"What – that dead raven?"

Frank nodded.

"You slept all day and into the night. At first I thought you were merely tired; then I thought you might be sick; but when I began trying to wake you and you would not wake!" He squeezed Frank tighter. "When once I thought on it I realised it must be some enchantment. What do you remember? Did something happen yester eve?"

"I do not even recall going to bed," Frank confessed.

Gerard sat up, frowning at him, and shook his head. "But you were not at all out of your senses. You spoke to me plainly."

"The last I remember, you were showing pictures to Michel. I was cold and went to stand by the fire."

Gerard's face closed, cold and tight. He sat up more completely.

Frank felt a cold hand of worry clench in his belly. "Gerard?"

Gerard looked at him, and his distant eyes cleared, a little. He said calmly, "You must not leave me anymore, Frank," he said. "At all – not even for a moment." He grimaced to himself and came to some decision. When he looked at Frank his face was open and pained, his brow creased. His fingers plucked uselessly at the topmost rug on the bed. "You were hypnotised," he said unhappily, "by Michel, I am certain of it.

"He intended you no harm – for he did no harm to you, and was never alone with you. Only with me. I believe he wanted to speak with me, for when I woke this evening he came back to my chamber in the tower and we spoke for several hours while you slept, for I thought then you were only sleeping. I should have realised, I should have wondered at once when you did not wake, but I had no cause to suspect – and you did not look ill, you slept peacefully."

Frank felt small, confused, and frightened. "Hypnotised?" was all he could say.

Gerard's frown deepened. "It will not happen again, I promise you," he said. "You will not sleep in here more – you will share my bed. No harm will come to you in vampire lands," he said fiercely, "where I have brought you; no harm that does not come to me will come to you through my folly."

Frank smiled at this. "As though I might have let you come alone," he scoffed, and Gerard smiled, too.

"Perhaps we should not have made this trip at all," he said.

"It is but a fortnight to Midsummer," said Frank quietly, an offering.

Gerard nodded, solemnly. "We leave after Midsummer."

When Frank shrugged the rugs away and sat up in bed, he rose from the side of the mattress and waited as Frank stood. He felt well-rested, actually, though his head was curiously light, as though the hypnotised dream had left a residue there.

"I am perfectly well," he assured Gerard. "It did me no harm to sleep all the day away once, for you know how easily I might have fallen sick after the night we ran to Castle Zaharia and back. The dream, I am sure, was my own. It was only strange, and not frightening at all until I woke up."

"It may have done you some harm to sleep all the day without eating once; drink this," said Gerard, and pressed a cup of cool water into his hands. It was, Frank thought, the water which had wakened him – the water and Gerard calling, perhaps. The sound had not penetrated the dream, but the urgency had reached him.

There was on the seachest a dish of fish in fragrant sauce, thin-sliced pork and veal, and congealed blood pudding garnished with thin streams of real blood. Frank touched the decanter of wine – still cool – and the pile of discarded china cups still redolent of coffee.

Gerard had opened Frank's wardrobe and stood frowning at the suits of livery, court velvets, travelling leathers, and linen blouses within. "The servants sent it when I would not come to dinner," he answered Frank's silent look. "But I fear I was too busy to eat, for I had begun trying to wake you in earnest, then."

Frank dipped his finger in the blood pudding and licked it clean. After a full day's fast he found it delicious, though the Queen would have flung it on the wall for daring to be served so cold. "At least I will not come ravening belowstairs and eat like a wolf and ruin all the work you have done to establish your werewolf character as civilised and aloof," he said thoughtfully, and carried the dish to window, where he could sit to eat.

Gerard's brow was creased in thought and he had taken out already Frank's red linen shirt and the worn leather breeches he had worn for travelling and riding for the last several years. "Were these cleaned?" he asked, and raised them towards his face for a delicate sniff. His eyes unfocused as they always did when Gerard was reading scents, since that first day he had discovered the world of werewolf senses. For all his practise and all Frank's remonstrations he could not learn to disregard its majesty, but fell always into awe, as though he gazed at a vista or a sleeping pup and contemplated drawing a picture.

"On our arrival," said Frank, "but surely you are not planning a journey today?"

"No," said Gerard – and laid them on the bed. "That dish of fish does not suit me," he added, thoughtfully.

"Come and share the pudding, then, and I will have the fish," Frank suggested, and drained a cup of wine. He could tell by the looks Gerard cast at the wardrobe and the door to the larger bedchamber that his mind was on Frank's raiment again, though he watched Frank carefully in between bites as they ate until Frank had forgotten to think about being hypnotised entirely in his laughter. "My appetite has never been better," he promised. "I really feel that I could wrestle a bear, so I hope it will be today that one challenges your honour, if ever."

"So ill-mannered a bear would not dare roam so near the Castle at night," said Gerard absently, "but as to your appetite, you are in error, for there are no berries on the dish at all," and Frank bowed his head in defeat.

"It is hardly usual to serve berries at dinner, though," said Frank at length, when he was licking clean the bones of the fish and Gerard was toying with a sticky pool of blood on the plate.

"Unusual at table, but not so unusual at Castle Wajdra if you have spoken with the servants," said Gerard, and Frank declined graciously to answer with the consciousness of doing Gerard a service, for they were both well aware it was royal orders which made strawberries appear so frequently at their meals for all the summer, and not Frank's.

"Well, perhaps I am sufficiently fortified to go belowstairs in search of a more substantial dinner now," Frank offered, with a wary eye on the pile of neckcloths in Gerard's hands.

"First you will please carry those leathers into my bedchamber, Frank," said Gerard, "and I will find a coat for you in my things, for it seems you neglected to bring more than two or three for yourself." He opened the great carven cabinet on the wall and reached within and emerged with his arms filled with velvet, pale light muslin, and worked Chinese silk, as well as many other things which had certainly not been in their trunks when they arrived.

Of course Frank had realised that the Queen had made Gerard presents of some several new garments, for he had worn a new black coat in the Italian style, and several waistcoasts in shades of red and white, almost every day since their arrival. But he had not sent Frank into his closet, and he had not worn, Frank saw now, a tenth of the jewel-toned gifts; they were much more to her Majesty's taste than her son's, for he favoured Wajdra black and red in all things.

"Should I not wear my daily livery?" said Frank doubtfully, but he helped Gerard to spread out the piles and separate them into cloaks and day-coats, sashes and waistcoats and robes. His eye caught on a coat the colour of rosemary, stitched in blood-red and gold, and a waistcoat the blue of summer sky with narrow stripes of polished white, and a silk robe of the Russian style dyed in the glorious rose-pinks of sunset.

"No," said Gerard grimly, "not today, not even your finest livery, if you had it here." He gave Frank a sharp look. "I know how you dislike the lace, but I had not thought you would leave it behind."

Frank swallowed his protest and said instead, "You would have court clothes for when the Council convened and I had not thought you would require also the other."

Gerard shook his head. "No matter. The rose?"

"A dressing gown?"

Gerard blinked and laughed, "No, the other," and showed Frank a grey silk waistcoat with the smooth texture of an eggshell, embroidered thickly at the border with a thicket of tiny thorns and roses smaller than Frank's smallest fingernail.

The silk blouses given to Gerard were much too large for Frank, whose head was of a height with Gerard's shoulder, and when Gerard insisted he try a few their cuffs covered his hands entirely. It was his own red linen shirt, then, which he wore under the long grey waistcoat, and his own travelling leathers rather than his court breeches, for no cause that Frank could discern.

The choice of coat gave Gerard long minutes' pause, and Frank was dressed in pale green, Chinese red, brown velvet, high-necked black trimmed in waterfalls of lace, two braided riding jackets, and a long-skirted court coat of a deep gold before Gerard at last discovered a coat of sober grey with deep cuffs which took his fancy. Of course it was trimmed with lace as well, thought Frank, but he made no protest.

The effect was good, he thought, if strange, when Gerard paused at the looking glass to fasten the buttons of his own waistcoat and Frank straightened his collar. The black velvet Gerard wore, unrelieved but for red silk and black lace, was unquestionably the richer garment next to the grey and brown and dark red of Frank's garb, though the cut and workmanship were costly and exquisite; and, too, though he stood in Gerard's shadow, in not a fragment of his livery Frank was less the King's servant, or his bodyguard, than his noble companion.

What the consequence or significance of these signs might be for the vampires Frank could not tell, though, and he went down the stairs in Gerard's shadow stiff with an uncertain feeling of dread.

The long gallery between tower and great hall echoed with distant voices, but the great hall they found empty of vampires or servants. The Queen's major domo Silvestru was in low-voiced conference in the ballroom under the long gallery with a broad-shouldered vampire in the garb of a wealthy merchant, a Traveller, and one of a troop of swarthy-skinned foreigners armoured like fighters. More human servants they passed on the stairs from the deep cellars, carrying crates and barrels and bulky objects rolled into woven carpets.

Harpsichord music drifted up from the large windowless cellar which the Queen jokingly called her "solarium", and there they found the Queen with her three ladies in waiting and an assortment of Castle Zombescu's other intermittent inhabitants and frequent visitors: Ovidiu, the amateur alchemist, who with her Majesty's permission was experimenting with poisons in the uninhabited and half-ruined East tower; Suker and Hediye, her Majesty's silent Turkish friends; Costa, a horse-trader; two musicians; human witches from villages on Zombescu land and three lords of Zombescu vassal estates; and two allies who had departed on secret and no doubt bloody errands for her Majesty in the weeks since their arrival.

The Queen herself was entertaining two strange vampire women dressed in black in the Spanish fashion, and holding court over the room in her husky, carrying voice in what Frank first took for Spanish, but then realised must be Portuguese; and midway through a story about, Frank thought, a lady and a bird, she changed briefly to French, spoke a few sentences in a tongue he had never so much as heard or seen, and then finished the story at last in Italian, when it was far too late to decipher the details he had missed.

Without appearing to have glanced in their direction, when she finished the Queen turned her beautiful face to them and added, as though in afterthought: "My elder son, Gerard, lord of the Wajdra, and," she said smoothly, "his companion Frank of the Iagar." There were bows from the Turk and the horse-trader and from both the Queen's messengers, and a nod and half-bow from the Spanish vampires. This was the first time, thought Frank, that the bows which were rightfully Gerard's were incrementally choreographed so as to include him.

It was not the only difference wrought by his dress, for he met stubbornly downcast eyes from two of the friendly Transylvanian servants, and hard, assessing looks from all the lords.

"I see the Wajdra are not the warlords of myth but in fact princelings who carry their toys with them to foreign lands," said Lord Giurgiu with an expression of amusement and a half-sneer. He met Frank's eyes, though, with an inviting but entirely off-putting smile from lazy half-closed eyes, and Frank felt the tickle of a psychic command seeking a crack in his defenses; it made him shiver, but had no other effect but to arouse him to disgust.

He glanced uncertainly at Gerard, sure that he would bridle with anger at the comment, but Gerard was smiling sweetly at Lord Giurgiu and shaking his hair back from his face. Frank could see him gathering himself to make some deceptively friendly comment stiff with a backbone of royal authority, but before he opened his mouth at leisure a shadow fell into the doorway and every eye turned to Prince Michel, descending the last stair and pulling off his silk-lined cloak with a flick of the wrist and a dizzying swirl of red.

"You are mistaken, Giurgiu," said Michel, in his quiet, deep voice, with its undercurrent of vampiric power that silenced every other throat in the room. "It is our mother -" he stopped and sketched her a deep bow, " - who taught us both to trust no one else with the care of our most precious possessions."

Frank, well-versed in the silent machinations of courts, felt his face go cool and expressionless. He did not let his eyes wander from Michel at all, though he was deeply puzzled whether he himself had been offered an offense as well as the unfortunate lord who closed his mouth white-lipped in anger lest he add to his appearance of foolishness by any slight to the Queen.

She made no comment at all, spared him not even a glance – more damning than any force of punishment or censure, Frank suddenly realised by Giurgiu's stiff back. Instead she gave a husky, rustling laugh and lifted her white arm to her son.

He kissed her hand as commanded and his eyes flickered to Frank with the slightest of smiles. Whether or not it was a mocking one Frank did not know, but he smiled back and took a step nearer to Gerard as her Majesty drew Michel down to the couch at her side.

Gerard took a high-backed chair near his mother and stretched his hand over the arm until a servant materialised and placed a goblet in it, something Michel did frequently but which Frank had never seen Gerard attempt before. He had begun to think it another piece of vampire magic. The servant tilted her head at him as she gave Frank a second goblet unasked, and Frank was greatly heartened to see her eyes were not unfriendly.

He rested against the arm of Gerard's chair, which he could see suited Gerard's notions of the performance that befit his silly grey silk clothes, and turned his ear to the musicians, who were attempting to tune an ancient harp with the aid of the slightly sour notes of the harpsichord. The dissonance made Michel, as well as the minstrels, wince every time the notes clashed together in midair and vibrated in jangling battle; Frank rather liked the sound.

In the end their goal was frustrated by the elder of the Spanish lady vampires, who it transpired was actually Italian and an old friend of the Queen's. She took exception to the sounds and, drifting gracefully by the harp, slit all the strings with the sharp-filed point of her fingernail.

On her way she paused and looked into Frank's eyes; she was a small woman, nearly of a height with Frank, with heavy waves of dark hair hidden under her lace veil. She took his chin in her hand carefully, holding her fingers at a comical angle to keep the sharp points from his skin, and turned his head slowly from left to right and back, a cool, distant glitter in her pale grey eyes. Gerard stiffened in his chair with a low growl of warning which always sounded somewhat strange in his human throat, but the lady released Frank and smiled at Gerard with a glow of humour.

"My apologies, your Majesty, no insult was intended," she purred. "Your mama is like a beloved younger sister to me; I assure you I would never offer harm to one of yours." She turned her gaze to Frank again and a dimple appeared in her left cheek. "Or one of yours, my lord Iagar," she added, and dipped her head before sweeping back to the couch. Frank thought he detected a knowing barb in the comment, but whether aimed in censure or sympathy at his possessiveness he could not puzzle out.

The ladies introduced themselves as Isabella Dalila Romero y Portillo and Antonia Consuela Ibáñez y Portillo, but her Majesty called them Isabella and Consolata, and they called her _Donata_. The other vampires of some rank, old friends and acquaintances, seemed to name the Queen Lisaveta, and this was the name given her by messengers and the Wajdra.

"No vampire younger than two centuries calls her by that name," observed Michel quietly. "She changed it for Dominique the first time she lived in France, I am told, and I suspect that was long before either of us was born."

They had travelled with the vampire whom Frank had seen conversing with Silvestru, a quiet but fiery-tempered Spaniard, and brought with them a short train of merchant wagons. These stayed three days in the courtyard, and seemed always to have a silent parade of servants moving to and from them with more mysterious packages carried up from the depths of Castle Zombescu where Frank would hardly have thought more treasures could be hidden. It was hard to tell whether the ladies or the Spaniard were in charge of the journey, for the Spaniard was often in conversation with the servants and overseeing the packing of the wagons while the ladies paid only the most cursory attention, but it was Doña Antonia who went on a tour of the wagons every day before dawn.

Doña Isabella commented on Frank's clothing every day she was there, and the night the merchant wagons left, swiftly unknotted the rose silk scarf from his collar, tied it again around his throat in a whispery silk confection shaped like a rose, and pinned it in place with a diamond from the bosom of her gown. Some of her flowery perfume clung to the metal setting, and the rest of the day it was as if her laughing face followed him around, patting his hair and telling him he was a credit to his clan and especially to his King.

"You are just so nearly my size that I can lean on your arm without the least discomfort," she had observed, walking alongside Frank and Gerard out of the banquet hall the night before. "Your Majesty, if I were to have liegemen of my own it would be just such a one by choice. Or sons, either," and she patted Gerard's shoulder too, and the hall rang with laughter when he shrugged off her hand.

It was a movement without malice. Gerard watched her tolerantly when she drifted along at his side, and told Frank as they hung their coats back into his wardrobe at dawn that she had excellent taste as well, and apparently so did his mother.

"It is quite restful to know there is _someone_ around who would offer us no harm," said Frank.

"Someone beside my mother," Gerard agreed, kicking off his soft indoor boots.

The bed, though it was smaller than the royal one in Castle Wajdra, was easily large enough for five Gerards or six Franks, or a whole pack of adolescent wolves. In their night gowns they climbed the little stairbox at its lower corner, and dragged the smooth layers of rugs down to crawl underneath; and changed one at a time, nosing through the dark, soft nest filled with the comforting and familiar scent of themselves.

Frank dozed off with Gerard's tail over the tip of his nose and woke in the afternoon stretched out on his belly, Gerard's half-open eyes gleaming at him from a few handspans away.

Frank stretched and changed, sitting up in bed to push the covers back and draw back the bedhangings. Gerard blinked at him and yawned, and uncurled his muscular black-furred body slowly only to shift onto his other side and lay his head on Frank's knee, letting his eyes fall shut with a sigh. Frank rested his hand on top of Gerard's head, combing his fingers absently through the silky coat, and squinted out at the daylight. "It must be past noon but not yet near sundown," he murmured, "if you are still tired."

But Gerard just shook his head and flicked an ear in command, nuzzling at Frank's knee. Frank laughed, a little, over the little bubble of nervousness in his chest that made his heart swell with sweet desire. He obeyed the silent command to scratch around the base of Gerard's ears and the sides of his neck and thought, not for the first time, how very much easier he would have slept, had he shared this bed with Gerard since their arrival.

"Are you trying to make me go back to sleep?" Gerard finally mumbled, changing and propping himself up on his hands and grinning at Frank through the curtain of his hair.

Frank yawned unrepentantly. "Perhaps. But we can still go to the East tower while daylight remains."

They had been making their tour of the parts of the castle slowly, now, though they had gone over it all quickly in just a few days when they first came. In less than a moon's cycle the Midnight Council would convene, the most dangerous part of their trip; despite the Queen's precautions there would be old and powerful vampires there, old and powerful vampires with their own histories and their own impenetrable motives, their own enemies and hidden alliances. The knife in the back (in this case, a wooden knife would be necessary) was the favourite technique for vampires, old masters of intrigue, and such messy business they preferred to take care of before the council was called; but no one could call vampires _predictable._ They both wanted to know every stone in Castle Zombescu.

***

At night Ovidiu worked his alchemy in the East Tower, which made it difficult to visit it then; he was an eager if absent-minded host, but there was a pervasive smell of chemicals even now, a faint stink of rot and an odd unpleasant edge to the air as if something truly awful had been burnt.

Glass and clay vessels, silver and gold flagons and dishes stained with blood, vials of what looked like ink, tubes and pipes and drifts of paper strewed every surface. Dried bundles of herbs hung from the crumbling rafters - and a great swathe of daylight lay on the floor, for a large portion of the wall of the East Tower was missing. This portion was mostly close to the lower of its two peaks, but the lowest chamber was high-ceilinged and a jagged hole surrounded in crumbling stone thrust down like a great fang into the wall, a songbird pirched on its edge and trilling buoyantly.

The stairs led down into the hallway they had come from and up into the sun-soaked top of the tower, where the corpse of a hare was hanging from the wall stripped of its entrails and buzzing with flies. Blood smeared its fur. "Certainly he has not made a meal of this one," said Gerard with distaste.

Frank's mouth was tight with revulsion. "Blood magic," he said, "is the worst sort, or so my old nurse at my uncle's house had always used to say. For even if it is not evil magic, it certainly walks in the realm of twilight. Nothing that is bought with blood can be bought cheaply and no prize rendered for it can be simply taken. It takes a terrible toll on the caster."

Gerard stepped around a small black table no higher than Frank's knee which stood freely in the centre of the room, and moved nearer the great gap in the wall. Frank twitched nervously and moved close to his side to gaze down with him, far, far down to a clay-sided ravine and the little valley far below the sheer cliff face.

"Stay well back," said Frank, low voiced, and took a firm grip on Gerard's sleeve.

Gerard tilted his head and looked up at the sky, blazing blue and clotted with clouds like floating cream. "Don't fear," he said, patting Frank's hand, "I'll go no closer; we can go down now. Certainly you could fly in here, though not into the lower room. The roof itself is only a little damaged." There was a wooden trapdoor in the ceiling, though, adjacent a still-solid section of wall, and in the absence of any ladder around Frank climbed up onto Gerard's shoulders to push it aside.

The flooring of the top level was all heavy old planks, but not, Frank thought, necessarily sound ones, for while the round peak of the lower roof swelled behind him, the ruins of the much older original roof towered over his head like an immense curving claw; half the substance of the roof was gone and replaced with the clear vault of the sky. It was almost achingly beautiful and looked terribly unsafe.

"Frank?" said Gerard, standing stable and unmoving under Frank's weight. Frank looked down at the top of his head, the slope of his long, white nose.

"Nothing," said Frank. "The top of the tower is more than halfway destroyed. It's half open to the sky, and certainly very lovely, but I don't trust the planks with your weight."

"Is that your command, then, that I may not climb up?" said Gerard, with a little quiver of laughter in his voice.

"If you so much as threaten it I'll certainly not help boost you up to look," said Frank, propping his elbow on the side of the opening and grinning down into Gerard's round uptilted face. The sun pouring from above lit on the smooth curve of his brow, the round softness of his cheeks and the dry delicate curve of his lips, the soft childish flesh loose under his jaw and throat. Frank ached with love and added calmly, "I can come down, now."

"Don't jump!" said Gerard, who had been kicked in the head a few times too many. He ducked his head and let Frank twist his legs out from under him and slide down his back with only a grunt of complaint.

Frank knelt down and then leant on the wall to climb back to his feet with Gerard astride his shoulders, his firm solid weight, his strong thighs tense against Frank's neck and collarbone. Frank wrapped a steadying arm around his leg and felt the muscles tense and shift under the soft flesh at the back of Gerard's thigh through his velvet breeches. Then he was standing and Gerard reached for the mouth of the hole and murmured, _"Oh,"_ all breathless with wonder.

Frank stood still with his other hand stretched out to the wall and breathed deeply, sinking further and further into the scent map of this place, the blood and stink of rotting flesh on the hare and the fresh scent of forest and flowers below, the trickle of water in the ravine and the mountain stream above them, the smells of Gerard, his sweat and flesh, his hair oily, the faint faded musk of sex. Frank breathed it in through his parted lips to fill his mouth with the taste of that smell and read its age and the notes of sleep and contentment and climax it had left like stains on Gerard's skin.

That last scent was faded, but its musk was the strongest, sharp-edged and marked though it was several days old and its physical traces had been long ago cleaned away. It trickled through Frank slowly, a muffled awareness like one small mouthful of water in a throat painfully parched with thirst. Like that small trickle of water, it did little to satisfy when it finally reached his stomach. Frank was all too used to restraint. He pulled back slowly, reluctantly, until the scent world faded back into the world of sight. He still felt those tingles of arousal all the way to his toes when they were walking back down the steps to the lower level, Gerard looking back over his shoulder as if he could take the sky with him. He probably meant to draw it later.

It was still his werewolf eyes he viewed the room through when they descended again to the lower level, and Frank sensed the trapdoor in the floor at once; cool, musty-smelling air came through it and rested on the floor around it like a pool of water. The door was curved at one edge, broad and wide, and set into the floor near the door from the long gallery, under a trestle table. Frank was able to pull it up himself. He looked over his shoulder and Gerard nodded, "I know about this; the lower chamber of the tower connects with the wall and the gate. It's not used any longer – but I didn't realise it was so large..."

Frank changed first and moved carefully and nimbly down the stone steps worn smooth with age. It was like immersing himself slowly in night, for the only illumination came from the sun above; it was enough for his wolf's eyes, now, sharpening, to take in the texture of the floor and the length of the room. Where the lower floor of the tower may once have ended, in antiquity, a wall was gone, as if it had never been; there were no bricks or stones or mortar, no scent of fresh dust and earth, so it must have happened long since, but the chamber continued away from the long gallery back to the Southeast Tower, narrow and close, under the massive fortified wall which ringed the courtyard on the valley side.

Long and narrow the wall was, but not too narrow for two small werewolves moving shoulder-to-shoulder. Gerard padded silently forward in the dimness and stood so close that their fur touched at the shoulder, and they followed the chamber together along the length of the wall. It curved gently, and sloped downward with broad stone stairs, which matched Frank's recollection of the wall from the outside. The only difference was how long it _now_ seemed.

Though their eyes were wide and sensitive to even the least light, after the curve of the path they were plunged into blackness and followed the maps of their noses. The dust stirred by their own paws, the mixture of old earth and new, the ancient crumbling marks of blood painted at regular intervals on the wall – not the scorched blood of a dangerous magical ritual but the simple smears of, no doubt, the first lord's primitive magical protections. These were so old they had practically worn and crumbled into dust.

The dust on the floor was thick, now, and some of it was wood dust, old and dry, not ripe with sap like fresh-cut wood. Frank smelled the powerful pungency, suddenly, of fresh pine, and his head jerked up. He could smell Gerard's anxiety, could feel his presence beside him in the dark, warm and solid, and tense and frightened. Then they smelled and heard it – the striking of fire.

The crackle rose quickly in volume, and its light was moving quickly, too quickly, through the darkness towards them. Which way?

Gerard turned back the way they had come first and moved towards the fire – but it was as wide as the corridor itself and creeping closer on the trail of wood shavings and dust, smoking powerfully, its smell masking the faint strains of human life behind it and its sound filling their ears. They turned and ran with the fire at their backs further along the bare stone corridor. It seemed to grow narrower as they ran, their chests heaving for air as they filled slowly with smoke.

He was gasping, now, and Gerard was coughing sharply beside him and running faster still. They should be at the gate, now, they should, thought Frank; where was it, or would the passage continue underneath it? In the blazing light of the fire though it faded somewhat behind them, they could see the corridor before them in flickering shadow so clearly, that it was only the sounds Frank suddenly heard, heavy and rhythmic like the movement of human feet, that could have distracted him when the wall loomed up before them.

It was blank and smooth, and he sniffed urgently at it, following the renewed whiff of sharp pine which seemed to vanish, cut into nothing here, at this wall. Gerard growled low in frustration and flung himself against the wall while the fire moved closer, and closer, and Frank gasped and moved towards him but it was _too late_ -

He changed. Gerard changed and caught himself on the wall with his hands, and slid down into the dust, scrabbling with his fingers along the floor and up the edge, panting and choking, "Where, Frankie, where!"

His black velvets were covered with dust, his voice hoarse and panicked and in this form, if he should be burned, he would be far more seriously injured, and not heal nearly so quick – Frank thrust himself between Gerard's arm and body, pressed his nose near the stone and closed his eyes and sank into the scent world again – past the fire and smoke, past the tremendous dusty oldness of the stones and the dust, the crumbled black blood, the citrus tang of pine – there, that – he caught it carefully and pulled it apart, layer by layer – the direction and the age and the sweet undertone of metal, the hint of water and life in the sap, and suddenly he had it.

The smell vanished behind the wall, but it was not cut but tangled and flattened, and one narrow thread of it, of pine clinging to human skin, had moved, had left its trace on a stone. Frank lunged at the stone, frantic as the heat rose like a bonfire and his eyes streamed with black smoke. Gerard pressed the stone with his palm, felt around the edge carefully, and Frank twined himself around Gerard's legs, facing back to the fire. The nearest fingers of it were reaching for them, reaching out and glowing white and gold, when Gerard sobbed in relief and the wall shifted under his hand and swung aside with a great gust of cool, clean air.

The door swung shut behind them like a weight falling into place and plunged them into blackness again, but here the smell of pine was not the only new smell. The dust was much thinner, for it had been swept away somehow. There was new wood, moldy fabric somewhere near, metal and blood and – not near any longer, but not so long gone – humans. Human men had come this way, had _run_ this way, just as they stood on the other side of the wall – back up this narrow parallel passage which opened up in front of them, curving along the wall and then – turning away.

Frank stopped where he stood, rigid with uncertainty; nearly anything, any unknown danger, must be better than running into a burning fire, but they were under a mountain, and they did not know where their enemy had gone. Deep under the castle, far away, the Queen and Michel and her loyal vampire servants and associates were sleeping. They were alone, and Frank's heart swelled with fear in an instant, a feeling so shocking and unpleasant he thought it would break. He wished so passionately, so desperately, not to be saved but only to know where this path led, that he was almost shocked when it did not work.

Gerard was motionless at his side, and Frank could feel him breathing. A tiny eddy of moving air came toward them, stirred Frank's fur and danced back to carry a clear impression of Gerard's scent now, no longer wholly ripe with anxiety but still filled with adrenaline. He touched Frank's shoulder and Frank nodded. In the pitch blackness, he still knew Gerard could hear his movement.

They started forward as one, slow and silent. They did not mean to be taken by surprise again.

The corridor was narrow and this time it truly was growing narrower, till it was just wide enough for them both, with Frank pressed close to Gerard's side, but he didn't wish to move forward or fall back. It sloped up without any steps at all, just a gradual incline curving still further away from the wall. The humans had taken the path they took, but the scent became no stronger or newer. They had not stopped; no one waited ahead for them.

Time melted and grew light or heavy, or entirely immaterial, and Frank had no notion how long they had been there underground. It felt like a whole night passed, but when finally they caught the glimmer of light again, it was warm sunlight on the mountainside.


End file.
